Electrical characterizations of a controllable field emission triode based on low temperature synthesized ZnO nanowires

Fabrication and field emission properties of a ZnO nanowire (NW) triode were investigated in this study. The ZnO NWs have a single-crystalline wurtzite structure, similar to 50 nm diameter and 3.4 x 10(10) cm(-2) number density. The ZnO NW triode shows good and controllable emission properties with the turn-on anode electric field (at a current density of 1 mu A cm(-2)), threshold anode electric field (at a current density of 1 mA cm(-2)) and field enhancement factor of 1.6, 2.1 V mu m(-1) and 3340, respectively. The ZnO NW triode exhibits transistor characteristics with a gate leakage region, linear region and saturation region. Furthermore, the controllable field emission performance of the ZnO NW triode can be enhanced by illumination and argon ion bombardment. A low temperature Si-based microelectronic compatible fabrication process was provided for successfully making ZnO NW based triodes with good field emission properties.