Study on energy distribution measurement of emitted electron from resonant tunneling cathode

在高分辨率电子束光刻、全息照相、电子显微镜和许多真空微电子器件中，需要具有单色能量的高电流密度电子束。通过量子阱结构中的能量子带的共振隧穿电子发射是吸引产生单色能量电子束的。采用分子束外延和光刻技术设计并制备了GaAs/AlAs单量子阱和多量子威尔斯共振隧穿阴极。在栅压附近观察到台阶状或脉冲状发射，二极管电流呈现负阻特性。实验结果表明，电子发射清楚地反映了量子阱中电子输运的共振效应。

A high current density electron beam with monochromatic energy is required for applications to high-resolution electron beam lithography, holography and electron microscopy and many vacuum microelectronic devices. A resonant tunneling electron emission passing through an energy subband in a quantum well structure is attractive to produce a monochromatic energy electron beam. We designed and fabricated GaAs/AlAs resonant tunneling cathodes with single and multi quantum wells by using molecular beam epitaxy method and photolithography techniques. Steplike or impulselike emission was observed near the gate voltage appearing the negative resistance characteristics in the diode current. The experimental results suggest that the electron emission reflects clearly the resonant effect of the electron transport in the quantum well.