Visible photoluminescence was observed in ultrafine Si particles at room temperature. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that Si microcrystallites were embedded in a Si oxide matrix for the sample which emitted the light. The emission energy depended on crystallite size in the range from 2.8 to 5 nm. The inverse relation between emission energy and the square of the crystallite size indicates that carrier confinement in the Si microcrystallites causes this photoluminescence phenomenon.

Plasmons in Si clusters were investigated by electron energy loss spectroscopy attached to high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, by which an individual cluster can be investigated with the electron probe of 2 nm size. It has been found that the plasmon energy increases in proportion to the inverse square of the cluster size, and this is caused by the increase of the energy gap due to the quantum confinement effect.

Electron trajectories in surface conduction electron emitter displays (SEDs) are analyzed based on the multiple scattering model. Besides calculating beam spot patterns on the phosphor by the ray tracing method, simple formulae for calculating beam spot size and electron emission efficiency are proposed. It is shown that these calculations reproduce experimental results. Using these simulation methods, we can easily estimate electron emission characteristics in the SEDs.

Abstract— A 10‐in. flat‐panel display (FPD) with surface‐conduction electron‐emitter (SCE) cathodes can be fabricated through a printing process. Ultrafine particle films of the SCEs are deposited by using ink‐jet printing. A prototype achieves full‐color and full‐motion pictures comparable to CRTs. The feasibility of larger and low‐cost SCE displays has been confirmed.

A nanometer scale metal/Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) film/metal structure is realized with an atomic force microscope combined with scanning tunneling microscope (AFM/STM). Even in this nanometer scale configuration, increase in conductance can be induced at any point in the LB film by application of a voltage pulse. The AFM/STM observation shows little surface modification has occurred by the voltage application, which shows that the conductance of the LB film changes without pit formation in the LB film or metal cluster deposition from the tip of the probe.