This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will demonstrate a unique diamond based cold cathode electron source that contains a randomly distributed high density of emission sites, fast response time, low energy spread, and high thermal conductivity. Due to the novel structure proposed and use of diamond as the cathode material, this electron source should not be subject to built-in wear-out mechanisms of Spindt-type field emission cathodes and should be relatively impervious to substrate poisoning by residual contamination. In Phase I this firm will construct this novel diamond-based electron source and test the properties of this source by comparing performance with more traditional Spindt-type field emission cathodes. The anticipated benefits of the proposed material include reduced production costs and increased performance of field emission electron sources used in vacuum electronic devices, electron sources for electron microscopes, and electron sources for field emission flat panel display devices.
