Highly Ordered Bamboo-Like 4H-SiC Nanowire Array Enabling Low Turn-On Field and Excellent Field Emission Stability

Fabricating field emitter devices simultaneously with low turn-on field and high current emission stability, which is critical for practical applications, has been a longstanding goal. In current work, an electrochemical etching method has been employed to successfully fabricate large-scale, highly ordered bamboo-like 4H-SiC nanowires which were then used to develop high-performance field emitters. The properties of bamboo-like morphology, highly ordered, sharp tip, single-crystal orientation, and good heat dissipation endow the as-developed field emitters with high performance. As a result, the SiC field emitter exhibits a low turn-on field of 0.54 V/ mu m and excellent current emission stability with the optimum current density fluctuation of only 0.8% within the operation duration of 5 h. This work provides a new perspective for developing superior field emitters.