Insight into TaSi 2 Nanostructures with Different Morphologies and Their Field Emission Properties

• Published in: Advanced functional materials 2024-11, Vol.34 (45)
• Main Authors: Su, Haijun, Guo, Yinuo, Yang, Xinyu, Liu, Congcong, Li, Xiang, Jiang, Hao, Yu, Minghui, Fan, Huichao, Guo, Min, Zhang, Zhuo, Ren, Wei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1616-301X; 1616-3028
• DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202406038

Recognizing the strong potential of cold cathodes for important commercial applications in fields such as electronics, there is a growing interest in the exploration of novel 1D nanomaterials. Among various cold cathode materials, TaSi 2 is of great interest for its outstanding field emission performance. In this work, the Si‐TaSi 2 eutectic composite with nano‐sized highly oriented TaSi 2 fibers and semi‐coherent phase interfaces is prepared by the laser floating zone melting technique with a very high‐temperature gradient of 6000 K cm −1 at a solidification rate of 200 µm s −1 . On the basis of directionally solidified Si‐TaSi 2 eutectic composite, well‐aligned TaSi 2 nanorod and nanotip arrays are fabricated by inductively coupling plasma (ICP) etching process and HNO 3 /HF wet etching process, respectively. The field emission measurements show that the field enhancement factor, turn‐on electric field, and effective work function are strongly affected by tip morphologies. The TaSi 2 array with regular nanotip structure possesses the best field emission characteristic among all TaSi 2 nanostructures, with a relatively low turn‐on field of 4.8 V µm −1 and a high current density of 733 µA cm −2 . These findings preliminarily establish a clear relationship between the performance and structure of the array, providing technical guidance for the application of this material in electronic devices.