Field Emission from an Array of Free-standing Metallic Nanowires

Arrays of single crystalline gold nanowires were synthesized
electrochemically in porous polycarbonate membranes. The polycarbonate membrane was then removed to obtain freestanding nanowires for field emission measurements. The turn-on electric field strength for field emission is found to be lower than 2V/μm. The actual electric field that extracted electrons out of the gold nanowires is estimated to be about 10³ times higher than the field directly expected in the model of a parallel plate condenser. The availability of the field emission is therefore attributed to the strong electric field at the tips resulting from small curvature radius of the gold nanowires.