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 free-standing 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 10^3 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.