We report the successful fabrication and testing of several 8×1 pixel test devices and several 32×32 pixel demonstrator devices consisting of spun-coated field electron emitting cathodes as an integral part of an addressable triode structure. The ink-based material is a vacuum compatible composite that can be inexpensively applied to large area glass substrates and encapsulated using conventional vacuum baking and sealing processes. In addition, improvements to our ink formulations have lowered the threshold fields of the composite and enabled devices to operate with a gate voltage swing of 40 V with anode potentials in the range of 500–3000 V. Our first devices consisted of ∼1 mm 2 centred pixels capable of emitting ∼20 μA of current from a sub array of ∼10 μm diameter gated apertures. Having now demonstrated the ability to switch pixel-sized elements in a triode array, broad-area consumer-priced high-information-density displays are a step closer to reality.
