AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Vacuum Technology Division Tuesday Sessions
       Session VT-TuP

Paper VT-TuP2
Low-cost Device Fabrication and Vacuum Packaging for Energy Efficient Field Emission Lighting

Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 6:30 pm, Room Central Hall

Session: Vacuum Technology Poster (and Student Poster Competition)
Presenter: Sushma Shrinivasan, University of California - Davis
Authors: S. Shrinivasan, University of California - Davis
C.E. Hunt, University of California - Davis
Correspondent: Click to Email
With the growing emphasis on climate change and global warming and the resulting need to cut down energy usage, energy-efficient lighting technologies that resemble day light spectrum and do not present health hazards are extremely attractive. Field emission lamps (FELs) have been presented as a viable alternative to existing lighting technologies with several advantages including (i) spectrum similar to daylight (ii) environment-friendly (iii) no health hazards to name a few. In this regard, the primary goal of this poster is to present a low-cost, simple device fabrication technique for a typical FEL. The FEL device consists of a base plate, face plate and side-wall (all made out of glass). The glass package is built by attaching the various components using ultra high vacuum epoxy. The base plate and face plate comprise of the cathode (reticulated vitreous carbon) and anode (aluminum coating) respectively with the face plate additionally comprising of a phospor coating. The exhaust tube for the device is located on the side-wall. The device is then attached to a turbomolecular pump and pumped down to vacuum levels of 1E-6 Torr. This level of vacuum is shown to activate the barium getter that is attached to the baseplate before the device packaging. The activation of the barium getter is performed using an in-house induction coil and a radio frequency generator operated at a frequency of 300 kHz. The packaged device when combined with a high voltage DC power supply is anticipated to lead to a low-cost energy efficient lighting option that has a spectrum similar to incandescent lamps with an energy consumption comparable to compact fluorescent lamps.