Stability Enhancement for Cold Field Emitter for Reliable Operation of the Micro-column System

摘要

Recently, the micro-column has been intensively studied as a potential candidate for next-generation lithography with high-throughput capability. The micro-column has a simple structure with an electron emitter, micro-lenses, a double octupole deflector, and an Einzel lens. The structure and performance of the micro-column are dependent on the characteristics of the electron emitter. The electron emitter should have several prerequisites such as stable emission of electrons, high brightness and long lifetime. It is also necessary for the emitted electrons to have sufficiently low kinetic energy, which can be achieved by using a very sharp emission tip. In this work, we made an extremely sharp tip by electro-chemically etching the tungsten wire in 10 % KOH solution. From the Fowler-Nordheim plot, the effective radius of the tip was found to be as small as ～12 nm, which is consistent with the value measured by SEM. We also discovered that the stability of emission can be enhanced very much through thermal treatment of the tip end by irradiating the Nd:YAG laser pulse.