FABRICATION PROCESS FOR HERMETICALLY SEALED CHAMBER IN SUBSTRATE

摘要

A process for fabricating, in a planar substrate, a hermetically sealed cham ber for a field-emission cell or the like, allows operat ing the device in a vacuum or a low pressure inert gas. The process includes methods of covering an opening (160), enclosing the vacuum or g as, and methods of including an optional quantity of gettering material. An exam ple of a device using such a hermetically sealed chamber is a lateral-emitter field-emission device (10) having a lateral emitter (100) pa rallel to a substrate (20) and having a simplified anode structure (70). In one simple embodiment, a control electrode (140) is positioned in a plane above the emitter edge (110) and automatically al igned to that edge. The simplified devices are specially adapted for field emission d isplay arrays. An overall fabrication process uses steps (S1-S18) to produce the devices and arrays. Various embodiments of the fabrication pr ocess allow the use of conductive or insulating substrat es (20), allow fabrication of devices having various functions and complexity, and allow covering a trench opening (160) etched through the emitter and insulator, thus enclosing the hermetically sealed chamber.