Field-Emission Vacuum Nanoelectronics: A Bird’s Eye View of Theory and Practical Applications (Series in Optics and Optoelectronics)

Field-Emission Vacuum Nanoelectronics: A Bird’s Eye View of Theory and Practical Applications explores the field in both theoretical and practical perspectives.Field-emission devices have moved from specialized applications to become potential candidates for a future beyond-CMOS circuits, offering superior performance at extreme temperatures, in harsh environments, and at high frequencies, due to their reliance on ballistic transport in vacuum-like or nanogap air-filled environments rather than solid-state lattice transport. Beginning with the mechanisms of electron emission from materials and highlighting the role of nanotechnology in field emission, the Fowler-Nordheim theory of field emission is extensively treated.Enhancements of the Fowler-Nordheim theory and its various alternatives are addressed, with emphasis on the Schottky-Nordheim transmission barrier, the Murphy-Good theory, and efforts made to rephrase and reformulate the standard Fowler-Nordheim theory.On the practical si