Vacuum xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Vacuum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/vacuum

WO3 nanowire field emission point electron source with high brightness
and current stability
Zufang Lin, Huanjun Chen, Juncong She, Shaozhi Deng, Jun Chen *
State Key Lab of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Guangdong Province Key Lab of Display Material and Technology, School of Electronics and Information
Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Field emission current stability and brightness are important criteria for commercial field emission point electron
WO3 nanowires sources. Here, field emission point electron sources were fabricated from individual WO3 nanowires (NWs) and
Current stability stable emission was achieved under ~10− 5 Pa. The reduced brightness of one of the emitter was ~6.08 × 109 A
Field emission
m− 2⋅sr− 1 V− 1, which was comparable to commercial cold cathode sources. One of the individual WO3 field
Point electron source
emitters could operate at an emission current of 0.68 μA for tens of hours without degradation using a ballast
resistor regulator. A current fluctuation of the emitter, at a low emission current of 155 nA, was 0.045% for the
short-term. Its long-term fluctuation, at 0.68 μA, was 3.89% for 38 h. Besides the ballast resistor, inert surface of
the oxide NW and low tip temperature owing to the defect-related field emission mechanism were proposed as
the reasons for such high emission stability under mild high vacuum. Our result was significant in the devel­
opment of stable field emission point sources.

1. Introduction
The point electron source is the main component in electron-beam
based inspection instruments and microfabrication equipment, such as
scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy
(TEM), electron beam lithography (EBL), etc. The consistent progress of
the semiconductor industry increases the demands on the performance
of these instruments, which is largely limited by the electron source.
Therefore, a high-performance point electron source is critical to the
development of these instruments. Compared to thermionic emission
(TE) and Schottky emission (SE) cathodes, cold cathode sources could
offer an electron beam with improved brightness and lowered energy
spread [1]. Therefore, they are expected to satisfy the growing demands
of the electron source in these instruments [2].
Until now, tungsten (W) tips are still the major cold cathode point
electron source for commercial SEM or TEM. A vacuum level of <10− 8
Pa was required while utilizing W tips as the cold cathode. Although
working in this vacuum environment, flash cleaning was required every
few hours on the W tips to prevent the temporal decay of the current,
which was not desired in the operation. The long- and short-term in­
stabilities of the field emission (FE) current are the weakened stems of
the W tip cold cathode sources, and many efforts have been invested to
explore new cathode materials to improve the property of cold cathode,
such as CNT, silicon, diamond and etc. [3–14].
In the studies of stability, carbon cone nanotip (CCNT) exhibits un­
precedented stability with a root mean square (RMS) of ˂ 0.5% during
the 1 h measurement in a vacuum level of 2 × 10− 9 Pa after flash
cleaning. Further, highly reduced brightness of 1.6 × 109 A m− 2⋅sr− 1
V− 1 and narrow energy spread of 0.32 eV were obtain from the CCNT
emitter. Moreover, by adopting CCNT as the emitter, the challenge of the
operation regarding the selection, alignment, and mounting of a typical
CNT onto the W tip could be avoided, and the reproducibility of the FE
characteristics could also be improved [15–17]. Furthermore, as
demonstrated by Zhang et al. a LaB6 nanowire (NW) with ultrahigh
brightness and beam monochromaticity could also work in a vacuum of
3 × 10− 7 Pa, at high current density, with very low flicker noise and
without decay for tens of hours. The excellent stability of the emission
current was due to the inert surface of the NW. Moreover, LaB6 NW was
also installed in cold cathode SEM and the SEM performance was
investigated. Compared to the W (310) cold cathode source, the per­
formance of cold cathode SEM utilizing LaB6 NW was significantly
improved in terms of imaging and analytical capabilities [18].
Lanthanum hexaboride (LaB6) cold field emission tips reported by Singh
et al. also possess excellent emission current stability. All the three tips

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: stscjun@mail.sysu.edu.cn (J. Chen).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vacuum.2021.110660
Received 29 April 2021; Received in revised form 4 October 2021; Accepted 5 October 2021
Available online 7 October 2021
0042-207X/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Zufang Lin, Vacuum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vacuum.2021.110660

Z. Lin et al.
Fig. 1. (a) Typical SEM image of one of the WO3 NW samples, which were welded on the W tip. The inset is the schematic diagram of the assembled WO3 NW emitter
for the FE measurements. (b) Tip morphology of one of the WO3 NW emitters. (c) TEM image of the NW. The inset is the selected area electron diffraction (SAED)
pattern. (d) High-resolution TEM image of the NW tip.
with different diameter could operate stable for more than 30 min in a
vacuum level of 5 × 10− 7 Pa. The tips were fabricated by electro­
chemical etching and focused ion beam milling which could avoid the
alignment problem during the fabrication of the sources [19]. A HfC NW
electron point source, which was recently developed by Tang et al. also
demonstrated good emission stability in a vacuum of 4 × 10− 7 Pa with
fluctuations of ˂ 1% for 1 h, at 50 nA. The practical brightness of the HfC
NW point electron source was 1.95 × 1011–3.81 × 1011 A m− 2⋅sr− 1 V− 1,
which corresponded to the energy spread of 0.21–0.26 eV. The terminal
surface structure of the NW was composed of HfC1− xOx layers with HfO2
on the edge. It is inert to the adsorption/desorption of gas molecules,
thus inducing such a stable emission current [20,21].
In summary, there are several new types of nanomaterials that
possess high brightness, low energy spread, and high emission stability
and are certainly qualified candidates for next-generation point electron
sources. However, to achieve their commercial applications, more in­
vestigations are still required. Furthermore, the syntheses of these ma­
terials are quite complicated, and the pretreatment process is also
challenging to operate, especially for LaB6 and HfC NWs.
Metal oxide NWs possess robust structures and chemical stabilities
and could be readily synthesized by thermal oxidation method. Like
other one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterial, metal oxide NWs possess
small radii and high aspect ratios and were reported to be excellent cold
cathode emitters [22–29]. Numerous studies were also conducted to
investigate their FE properties, and the results indicate that the FE
currents of metal oxide NW films, such as ZnO, CuO, and WO3 NW films,
were steady [30–33]. Therefore, investigation of the stability of an in­
dividual metal oxide NW would be attractive. The results of our previous
works indicate that defective WO3 NWs possess high emission currents
and are beneficial to achieving a long lifetime electron source [34,35].
Therefore, in this study, we comprehensively studied the FE properties
of single WO3 NW field emitter and explained the underlying mecha­
nism. Because of the robust structure, chemical stability, as well as the
unique FE mechanism, the WO3 NW field emitter could generate
2
Vacuum xxx (xxxx) xxx
emission current of 0.68 μA with RMS of 3.89% for tens of hours in a
mild vacuum level of 1.4 × 10− 5 Pa while connecting with a ballast
resistor. The reduced brightness of the emitter was ~6.08 × 109 A
m− 2⋅sr− 1 V− 1. The properties of the WO3 NW emitters were repeatable
and uniform. The results obtained from our work indicate that WO3 NW
may be a candidate for application as a point electron source.
2. Material and methods
The WO3 NWs were grown by a non-catalytic thermal oxidation
method. The details of their preparation process, composition, and
structure characterization have been reported in our previous work [34,
35]. Briefly, a glass substrate was cleaned, after which a W film of ~1 μm
thick was deposited on the substrate by direct current (DC) magnetron
sputtering. The sample was heated to 540 ◦ C within 90 min while N2 gas
was passed into the quartz tube. Thereafter, after it was kept for 90 min,
at 540 ◦ C, the sample was allowed to cool to room temperature (24 ◦ C).
Before the NW assembling process, the apex of W tip was truncated
by the Ga ion beam in a focused ion beam (FIB) system to obtain a
platform. Next, the truncated W tip was moved to touch a selected WO3
NW, and a thin layer of Pt/C film was deposited onto the contact point
between the NW and the platform of the truncated W tip. The NW would
be subsequently separated from the substrate. The assembling process
was easy to operate and reproducible.
The morphology and structure of the WO3 NWs were characterized
by SEM (Zeiss SUPER-55) and high-resolution TEM (HRTEM, FEI Tecnai
G2 F30). A phosphor screen and an indium tin oxide (ITO) thin film were
employed as the anode for the brightness and stability measurements,
respectively. Five individual WO3 NWs were measured in this work. The
distance between the W tip and the anode was in a range of 3–5 mm,
which was slightly different for the different measurements in practical
operation. The samples would undergo a common conditioning process
to remove the surface adsorption before measurements. In short, the
applied voltage would increase gradually after sweep up and down for
Z. Lin et al.
Fig. 2. (a) FE I/V curve and (b) the corresponding FN plot of one individual
WO3 NW. (c) Grayscale information of the FE image of a WO3 NW sample that
was extracted by MATLAB. Inset is the FE emission pattern.
many cycles. A DC power supply (Keithley 248) and a multimeter
(Keithley 6485) were employed in the FE measurements. Resistors with
different resistance (vary from 300 MΩ to 900 MΩ) as current regulator
were connected to the anode for stable operation. The specific resistance
was chosen based on the emission current and experimental procedure.
During conditioning and early stage of the measurement large resistor
(900 MΩ) was used and when the conditioning process was finished, a
small resistor (300 MΩ–500 MΩ) was adopted.
3. Results and discussions
3.1. Morphology and structure
Fig. 1 (a) shows a typical image of one of the WO3 NWs, which was
welded on the W tip. There, we can observe that the WO3 NW was firmly
3
Vacuum xxx (xxxx) xxx
mounted on the truncated W tip. The inset is the schematic diagram of
the assembled WO3 NW emitter for the FE measurements. Fig. 1 (b)
shows the SEM characterization result of the tip for one sample of the
field emitters. From the SEM image, it could be observed that the shape
of the NW tip could be approximated as a hemisphere. Its diameter and
length are 75 nm and 4.3 μm, respectively. The structure of the NW
could be observed in Fig. 1 (c) and (d). The results indicated that WO3
NW was defective with ordered planar defects, as previously depicted
[34]. The cleavage plane of the NW tip was (002), which possessed the
lowest energy, indicating that it was the most stable surface [36].
3.2. FE properties and brightness of the WO3 NW emitter
Typical FE property of one of the WO3 NWs is shown in Fig. 2 (a) by
subtracting the partial voltage of the ballast resistance. The turn-on
voltage corresponding to a current of 10 nA was ~155 V. The emis­
sion current (0.8 μA) could be achieved when the applied voltage
attained 200 V. The FE property could be described by the Fowl­
er–Nordheim (FN) equation:
/ ( / )
I = J × S = aF 2 ϕexp − bϕ3/2 F S (1)
where I and J are the emission current and current density, respectively;
S is the FE area; a = 1.54 × 10− 6 ; b = 6.53 × 109 ; ϕ is the work function;
And F is the electric field, at the surface, and it could be approximated by
Eq. (2) [37]:
/
F = Vapplied 5r (2)
Where Vapplied is the applied voltage and r is the radius of the NW. The
FN plot, shown in Fig. 2 (b) indicated that the emission process obeyed
the tunneling mechanism. The slope of the FN plot is 2605.4. The field
factor β value is calculated to be 2.5 × 107 m− 1. Then the “effective” tip
radius obtained from calculation is 8.1 nm as β = 1/(5 × r).
FE image of a WO3 NW field emitter was recorded from the phosphor
screen anode in the measurement, and the result is given in the inset of
Fig. 2 (c), which also shows the grayscale information of the FE image
that was extracted by MATLAB. From the results, the full width at half
maximum (FWHM) of the curve, which was referred to as the diameter
of the FE pattern, could be obtained. Its value is ~1.42 mm. Two peaks
could be observed from the gray scale image. This might originates from
the emission from different sites. The image on the phosphor screen is
the magnification of the emission site at the surface. The emissions from
the tip usually originate from small area at atomic scale because of the
work function variation induced by crystalline facet or surface absorp­
tion induced. In the FE image measurements, the radius of the NW was
31.6 nm, the distance between the cathode and the anode was ~4 mm.
Employing the method described in the reference [38], the solid angle of
WO3 NW could be calculated as 0.097 sr. The reduced brightness of WO3
NW is represented by Eq. (3):
/
Br = I/(Sv ΩV) = I (πrv 2 ΩV) (3)
Since the tip of WO3 NW possessed a smooth hemisphere-like shape,
the virtual source-size could be expressed as follows [39]:
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
rv = 3rd/5eF (4)
Where r is the radius of WO3 NW, e is the elementary charge, F is the
electric field, andd = 9.76 × 10− 11 F/(φ1/2 t(y)) is the transverse energy.
Further, t(y) = 1 + 0.1107y1.33 and y = 3.79 × 10− 5 F1/2 /φ while kT/
d < 0.7 and y < 1 [39,40].
Resistance of the ballast resistor is 300 MΩ. The partial voltage
applied on the NW was 440 V, and the emission current was 700 nA. The
work function of WO3 NW, as adopted in our previous work, was 4.6 eV,
which was reasonable based on the range (4.26–4.91 eV) that was re­
ported in the literature [41]. By approximating the shape of the nano­
wire tip as a hemisphere, rv was calculated to be 0.929 nm. Employing
Z. Lin et al. Vacuum xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 1
Comparison of the reduced brightness of different individual one-dimensional nanomaterial point electron sources.
Material Vacuum levels Radius Brightness ( × 109 A m− 2⋅sr− 1
FE current rv (nm) Solid angle Angular current density Reference
(Pa) (nm) V− 1 ) (nA) (sr) (μA⋅sr− 1)
8
MCNT 2.66 × 10− 2.7 3±1 Total current 2.1 ± 0.2 – 16 ± 3 [43]
5–90
− 9
CCNT 2 × 10 ~2.5 1.6 Probe current 0.3 0.006 13 [15,17]
2.5
9
MCNT 5 × 10− 10 0.11 Total current 0.5 – 11 [44]
–
6
W5O14 10–8 ~25 – Total current – 8.03 × 10− 25.1 [45]
NW 580
− 7
LaB6 NW 3 × 10 ~30 60 Probe current ~0.195 – – [46]
–
7
HfC NW 5 × 10− ~25 289 Probe current ~0.357 – – [20]
46.4
6
WO3 NW 5.3 × 10− 31.6 6.08 Total current 0.929 0.097 7.24 this work
700

Fig. 3. (a) Typical short-term stability of a WO3 NW, at low (~155 nA) and high (0.886 μA) emission current. (b) Long-term current fluctuations of a WO3 NW in
~38 h.

the parameters and Eq. (3), the estimated reduced brightness of WO3
NW was 6.08 × 109 A m− 2⋅sr− 1 V− 1 rv would be smaller and the reduced
brightness would be higher if we used the value of the tip radius
calculated from the slope of the FN data. A further experimental result
indicated that the reduced brightness of WO3 NW may be higher than
the aforementioned one because WO3 NW could operate stably, at a high
emission current of 2 μA.
The brightness of the WO3 NW was compared to other point electron
source made from individual one-dimensional nanomaterials, which
were reported in the literature, as listed in Table 1. Notably, the angular
current density of WO3 NW was slightly low despite the high emission
current. The low angular current density was attributed to the large solid
angle. We suspect that the large solid angle was caused by the low
vacuum level and the low applied field. In a low vacuum environment,
the emitted electrons would be scattered by the residual ions and gas
molecules, hence the direction of the electrons would be diffused.
Probably, plate holes and a Faraday cup could be introduced in the beam
brightness measurement to filter out the emitted electrons of wide an­
gles. Generally, WO3 NW could be a qualified field emitter for electron
sources with high brightness. However, further investigation of the
reduction of the solid angle is required. Moreover, an accurate calcu­
lation of the brightness by measuring rv, experimentally, may also be
required, as well as reducing the diameter of the NW, as an alternative
and effective method of increasing its brightness [42].
3.3. FE stability of the individual WO3 NW emitter
The RMS noise ratio is the parameter that is commonly employed to

Table 2
Comparison of the FE stabilities of point electron source made from individual one-dimensional nanomaterials.
Material Pretreatment Auxiliary circuit Vacuum levels Measurement FE current Fluctuation Time Reference
(Pa) temperature (◦ C) (nA) (h)
8
CNT 700 ± 50 10 min flash – 1.33 × 10− 300 200 0.2% 1 [47]
cleaning
9
MCNT undescribed active current 5 × 10− RT 100 0.5% 2 [44]
regulation
CCNT Flash cleaning – 2 × 10− 9 RT 40 0.5% 1 [16]
5
SCNT undescribed ballast resistor 6.65 × 10− RT 1000 5% 10 [48]
W5O14 NW Flash cleaning – 10–8 RT 5 3.5% 0.67 [45]
LaB6 NW Field evaporation – 3 × 10− 7 RT ~10 0.32% 1/60 [18]
HfC NW Field evaporation – 5 × 10− 7 RT 50 0.49% 1/60 [20]
0.93% 1
2.72% 5
250 0.6% 1/60
7
FIB milled Ga–HfC undescribed – 1 × 10− RT 173 0.7% 5/3 [21]
NW
− 5
WO3 NW Common conditioning ballast resistor 300 1.4 × 10 RT 692 0.332% 1/30 this work
process MΩ
300 MΩ 0.864% 1
500 MΩ 682 3.89% 38
300 MΩ 1151 1.18% 5/6
800 MΩ 155 0.045% 1/30

4
Z. Lin et al.
Fig. 4. (a)–(d) are the HRTEM image, mapping result of the W + O, O element, and W element, respectively. (e) Field emission I–V curve of the W tip measured
immediately after field evaporation process. (f) Stability of a WO3 NW at different vacuum level.
evaluate the stability of a field emitter. Generally, higher emission
current would increase ion bombardments. Also high emission current
will induce increasing temperature at the emitter tip due to Joule
heating, which will increase absorption and desorption process. These
phenomena will induce higher fluctuation in emission current. How­
ever, a high emission current is required in practical applications.
Therefore, the emission stabilities of WO3 NW, at different emission
currents, were studied. The FE stability measurements of the WO3 NW
field emitters were conducted, at a pressure of ~1.4 × 10− 5 Pa. Our
results indicated that WO3 NW could emit tens of hours with a ballast
resistor connecting to the anode, at a current of 0.682 μA (ballast resistor
500 MΩ), without degradation. The long-term measurement was
terminated because of the data overflow of the software. The typical
short- and long-term stabilities of the emitter are shown in Fig. 3. The
short-term current fluctuation of WO3 NW, at 155 nA and 0.886 μA were
0.045% (ballast resistor 800 MΩ) and 0.415% (ballast resistor 300 MΩ),
respectively, in 2 min. Limited by the accuracy of the meter, the resis­
tance of the ballast resistor in low current measurement was increased to
increase the partial voltage of the ballast resistor and reduce the influ­
ence of the output voltage fluctuation of the voltage source on mea­
surement results. Specific resistance of the ballast resistor is not vital to
the FE stability and the reason will be present in the discussion part
below. The long-term current fluctuation of the emitter for ~38 h was
3.89%. The high stability characteristics were repeatable and could be
obtained from the different measured samples. More data on the emis­
sion stability are presented in the supplementary material (Fig. S1). For
comparison, the FE stabilities of other reported nanomaterials are
summarized in Table 2. By comparison, it could be observed that the
stability of the WO3 NWs with a ballast resistor was particularly
excellent.
We tried to compare its field emission properties with the W tip
under similar vacuum level. However, we found there was always an
oxide layer on the surface of the W tip. A typical TEM characterization
result of a W tip is shown in Fig. 4(a–d). The element mapping results
show oxide layer exists on the tip. We measured the FE properties of the
tip and the results shown that the FE properties and stability were
similar with that of the WO3 NWs. We think the emission is from the
oxide therefore the properties are similar due to the influence of the
surface oxide. We later adopted a field evaporation process to remove
the oxide layer. We increased the emission current suddenly to a high
5
Vacuum xxx (xxxx) xxx
value to clean the tip. And the FE emission properties were measured
immediately after field evaporation. We found after the field evapora­
tion the emission current (~6 μA) was much lower than that before field
evaporation process and the turn-on voltage of the tip increased from
~359 V to 2245 V. However, we found the emission from tungsten tip
was not stable after the field evaporation treatment process. Fig. 4 (e)
shows a typical result which we obtained when measuring the field
emission I–V curve of the W tip immediately after the field evaporation
process. The emission current was low (in the level of several nA) when
we first increased the voltage to 2000 V. Then the emission current will
increase to higher current (up to 6 μA) when sweep the voltage from 0 to
4000 V. When we decreased the voltage again, the current was much
higher than that the current obtained when the voltage sweeps up, as
shown in Fig. 4 (e). The current level was close to that before the field
evaporation process gradually. We suspected the tip was rapidly
oxidized by the residual gas (mainly water vapor) in this vacuum level
(10− 5 Pa) during the measurement. Then the field emission current
would be similar to the WO3 NWs again. Due to this complicated
behavior, we cannot obtain the emission stability of the W tip at this
vacuum level. However, these results seem to indicate that the tungsten
oxide layer was helpful to improve the emission stability and decrease
the turn-on voltage of the W tip at this vacuum level.
We also measured the current stability of the WO3 NW under
different vacuum levels and the results are shown in Fig. 4 (f). The
current fluctuation of the WO3 NW at a pressure of ~1.4 × 10− 5 Pa, ~1
× 10− 5 Pa and ~9.3 × 10− 6 Pa (ballast resistor 300 MΩ) are 0.94%,
0.79% and 1.52%, respectively. These results further indicated that the
WO3 NW is less influenced by the vacuum level.
3.4. Discussion about the current stability of the individual WO3 NW
emitter
First of all, we found that the ballast resistor was pivotal for
achieving long time operation and balancing the fluctuations of the
emitted current. Since the vacuum level was about 10− 5 Pa, surface
adsorption, desorption and ion bombardments due to the residual
molecules will definitely cause fluctuations in the current. Moreover,
field emission is a quantum tunneling could cause the fluctuations in the
current. We also measured current stability without ballast resistor
(Supporting materials, Fig. S2). It was found the emission current is
Z. Lin et al.
Fig. 5. (a) FE stability of one of the individual WO3 NW emitters connected
with different ballast resistors. (b) FE stability of two individual WO3 NW
emitters connected with the same ballast resistor.
instable and the NW emitter is liable to breakdown. High spikes in
current were present and this will cause the NW could not keep thermal
equilibrium and the temperature rise sharply could easily lead to ther­
mal run away and breakdown of NW will occur. Either, without ballast
resistor, the NW could not undertake lone time constant voltage surface
conditioning to improve the stability by surface cleaning. By using the
resistor, the spikes could be suppressed and the NW will not easily go
breakdown. Constant voltage conditioning will be possible only using
the resistor. Also, through an adjustment of the partial voltage applied
on the NW, the ballast resistor would help to achieve a high stable
current. When the FE current increase, partial voltage of the ballast
resistor will increase and the voltage applied on the NW would decrease.
Then, the FE current would decrease due to the reduced applied voltage
and protect the NW from thermal runaway and vice versa. It is worth
noting that by incorporating ballast resistors, diodes, MOSFETs, or
ungated FETs could not only improve the stability but also the unifor­
mity of the emission from large area field emitter arrays [49–54]. Here
as only one single NW emitter is used, the resistor could also increase the
uniformity of the emission from different individual NW emitters.
However, our results using different ballast resistors show that the
reason of stable current is not only the resistor adjustment. As shown in
Fig. 5, the instability of current measured from one sample connected
with different ballast resistors and two different NWs connected with the
6
Vacuum xxx (xxxx) xxx
Fig. 6. Calculated relationship between the FE current and the temperature of
the WO3 NW tip.
same ballast resistor indicates that the resistor adjustment do not play a
decisive role in stable current. Current fluctuations of the same WO3 NW
connected with 300 MΩ and 500 MΩ are 1.61% and 2.11%, respectively.
It is obvious that the FE stability does not increase due to the higher
resistance. Fig. 5 (b) shows the FE stability of two individual WO3 NW
emitters connected with the same ballast resistor. Although connecting
with the same ballast resistor, current fluctuations of the two samples
are different from each other. RMS of the two samples is 0.86% and
2.26% respectively. It reveals that the current fluctuation of the NW is
more likely depending on the characteristic of the NW itself under the
protection of the ballast resistor. Therefore, the structure and surface of
WO3 NW might also play important roles.
To obtain high emission stability that the change in work function of
the tip during the continuous emission process should be small and the
influence of the changes could be balanced by the ballast resistor. From
the characterization results of our previous work, it is clear that WO3
NW, which was synthesized by this method, possessed a γ-monoclinic
lattice. The TEM results indicate that the cleavage plane of the NW tip
was (002), which was thermodynamically stable [55]. Moreover,
because of the oxidation-resistant behavior and mechanical robustness
of oxides, the tip surface of WO3 NW would be chemically inert and
resistant to ion bombardment. Furthermore, the low turn-on field of the
NW could reduce the kinetic energies of the back-bombarding gas ions
and minify its impact on the cathode [56]. These unique characteristics
of WO3 NW are favorable for reducing the changes in surface work
function during the emission process.
Additionally, a current induced heating usually presents in nano­
structured field emitter while operating at high current level [57,58].
However, according to the defect-related FE model described in our
previous work, a low temperature is expected due to the negative
feedback induced by defect-inducted conductivity. During the FE pro­
cess, the temperature of the NW would increase while the FE current
increases due to the Joule heating. Then, as the temperature increased,
more carriers would be excited from the defect states to the conduction
band and promote the transport process. Naturally, the resistance of the
NW would decrease. The decreasing resistance would play a negative
feedback on the increasing Joule heating and limit the increasing of the
temperature of the NW. We used the defect-related FE model described
in our previous study to estimate the tip temperature of the WO3 NW
during field emission [34]. Values of the parameters used in the calcu­
lation were listed as follow: the length and the radius of the measured
NW are 3.36 μm and 22.4 nm, respectively. The heat conduction coef­
ficient k is 1.63 W(mK)− 1and the transport mechanism factor Q equals
130 meV according to our previous study [34]. The concentration factor
Z. Lin et al.
5
ρ0 is 4.9 × 10− Ω m which is tuned slightly to make the theoretical
current value match the experimental one. By substituting the formula
of the FE current density and the value of the parameters listed above
into the temperature-dependent heat equation, temperature of the NW
tip would be obtained when thermal equilibrium is established. A
calculated variation of the temperature of the WO3 NW tip (Ttip) with the
FE current is shown in Fig. 6 considering the effect of a defect-induced
conductivity. It could be obtained that the temperature of the NW tip
is only 603 K while the emission current is 0.682 μA. As the current
continues to increase, the temperature of the NW tip increases slowly
and the maximum tip temperature of the NW is 630.7 K during the
dynamic equilibrium process. Therefore, WO3 NWs, which were utilized
in our work, were predicted to be the real cold cathode, and the influ­
ence of Joule heating on the emission property might be minimal.
Overall, we think that the ballast resistor, structural stability, chemical
stability, as well as low Ttip, were responsible for the stable emission at
high emission current without decay or a notable fluctuation for tens of
hours.
The aforementioned results demonstrated that the WO3 NW emitter
combined with a resistor regulator could overcome the practical insta­
bility, which is the shortcoming of the commercial cold cathode sources
and other metal field emitters. This advantage would overcome the
problem of high vacuum requirement and quick current degradation in
the presence of traces of oxygen of metal field emitters [59]. It would
give opportunity to create more resilient devices. However, the emission
current of the WO3 NW emitters still needs optimization. The maximum
emission current of the WO3 NW can be further increased by tuning the
conductivity by varying defect concentration, which was depicted in our
previous work [31,32]. Moreover, further works on measuring the en­
ergy spread of the WO3 NW emitter and applying WO3 NW emitter in an
electron gun for electron microscopes are required. And tens of hours are
not adequate to benchmark lifetime of a cold cathode. In order to verify
the lifetime of the NW emitter, long time measurement is needed, which
should be carried out in the future.
4. Conclusion
Summarily, highly stable field emitters, which were employed as
point electron sources in a vacuum level of 10− 5 Pa, were developed
from individual WO3 NWs and investigated. Short-term fluctuation of
one of the field emitters, at 155 nA, was 0.045% and its long-term (38 h)
fluctuation, at 0.68 μA, was 3.89% while connected with a ballast
resistor. The stable emission could be attributed to the ballast resistor
regulation, the tip’s chemical inertness and resistance to ion bombard­
ment and low tip temperature during high current emission due to the
defect-induced conductivity enhancement. A reduced brightness of
~6.08 × 109 A m− 2⋅sr− 1 V− 1 was achieved from an individual WO3 NW
field emitter, which satisfied the requirement for commercial applica­
tion. The high brightness is mainly due to high emission current and the
small tip size of the WO3 NW. Our results are of significance for over­
coming the current challenges of developing a cold cathode source by a
simple method. Essentially, the probing and expansion of the advantages
of an individual WO3 NW field emitter are still desired.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Na­
tional Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61901536 &
91833303), National Key Research and Development Program of China
(Grant No. 2016YFA0202001), the China Postdoctoral Science
7
Vacuum xxx (xxxx) xxx
Foundation (Grant No. 2019M663232), the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities and the Science and Technology
Department of Guangdong Province (Grant No.2020B0101020002).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.vacuum.2021.110660.
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