Improvement of field emission characteristics of tungsten oxide nanowires by hydrogen plasma treatment

¹  Institute of Microelectronics, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University Tainan, 70101, Taiwan, Republic of China
²  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd (TSMC) - Hsinchu 300, Taiwan, Republic of China
³  Department of Electronic Engineering, Wu-Feng Institute of Technology - Chiayi 62153, Taiwan, Republic of China

Corresponding author: sjwang@mail.ncku.edu.tw

Received: 1 May 2008
Accepted: 12 August 2008

Abstract

The use of hydrogen plasma (H-plasma) treatment to improve field emission (FE) characteristics of self-synthesized tungsten oxide nanowires (TONWs) is reported. With a H-plasma treatment under a working power of 200 W and a pressure of 500 mtorr for 20 s, improved FE characteristics with a turn-on field (4.7 V/μm at 10 μA/cm²) lower than those of the as-grown case by 23% and a reduction in the effective emission barrier of 0.72 eV were obtained, which is attributed to the reduction in oxygen adsorption, decrease in the wire length and density, and transition of TONWs surfaces from well crystalline into the amorphous phase.