Electron field emission enhanced by geometric and quantum effects from nanostructured AlGaN/GaN quantum wells

Electron field emitters that provide intense and stable currents are important to vacuum microelectronic devices. In this work, we demonstrate high-performance electron field emission (FE) from nanostructured AlGaN/GaN quantum wells by coupling the quantum and geometric effects. Pulsed laser deposition is utilized to fabricate the FE cathode. The field emitter exhibits a low threshold field of only 1.1 V/μm and yields a stable emission current of 5 mA/cm2 at 1.8 V/μm, making it suitable for FE-based applications.