Displacement sensing by field emission with nanometer resolution

le Fèbre, A.J. and Siekman, M.H. and Abelmann, L. and Lodder, J.C. (2007) Displacement sensing by field emission with nanometer resolution. In: Transducers 2007 & Eurosensors XXI Digest of Technical Papers, 10 June - 14 June 2007, Lyon, France.

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Abstract:	Field emission is used as a displacement sensing method, exploiting the exponential relation between field emission current and electrode gap. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) probes have been used as field emission source to measure I/V characteristics which were found to correspond well to theory. The field emission sensor was operated in a more linear regime by using feedback on the position of the probe in order to maintain a constant current. The sensitivity of the sensor for displacement was found to be 0.26 V/nm at a range of ~100 nm. From the experimental data, typical parameters for the Fowler-Nordheim equation were deduced and used to model the sensor performance. The measurements confirm that field emission can be applied to sense the distance between a probe tip and sample with <20 nm resolution.
Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item
Faculty:	Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS)
Research Group:	Transducers Science and Technology (TST)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/64020
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