Talk:Field electron emission

Bracketed references that aren't given

...were added in this edit. The editor was User:Jkoepke, who hasn't contributed in the last 8 months. He's been asked for the references on his talk page, and I just asked again. --Steve (talk) 03:56, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

This page has now been completely revised; so the above comment is no longer relevant (RGForbes (talk) 18:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC))

Merger with page on Fowler-Nordheim Equation

Yes, I agree that the material on the Fowler-Nordheim Equation page should be incorporated into this page on field emission - the equation appears here as well, although in a slightly more basic context (RGForbes (talk) 23:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)).

This page has now been edited to contain much fuller information on Fowler-Nordheim-type equations, and the information on the other page can be reduced to a brief statement and a link. (RGForbes (talk) 18:42, 22 February 2009 (UTC))

It would probably be better to turn the page Fowler–Nordheim equation into a "Redirect" to this page. Then when someone clicks a link to that page they end up here instead. Just like Meter is a redirect to Metre. --Steve (talk) 19:01, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. This has now been done, though not by me. (RGForbes (talk) 02:21, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

Is this page too technical ?

My view is that the material in the sections currently headed "Theory of field emission from metals" and "Extending the field emission theory from metals" is certainly is too mathematical, too specialist, and not sufficiently explained. It's also not 100% correct, and presented in a fashion that is not 100% compatible with the international scientific conventions introduced in the 1970s. I plan to replace this material when I can find time, I would be interested to hear views on whether the the material in the earlier two sections is considered too technical: it's aimed at late-stage undergraduates and starting research students - on the grounds that nowadays Wikipedia is a place that students look for information. More generally, there seems to be a problem in that one needs to provide information at two levels - at a non-technical level suitable for the complete non-specialist, and at a "beginning technical" level suitable for the "beginning specialist" who can be expected to already have some basic understanding of the relevant underlying science. Personally, I am happy for Wikipedia to have both roles, but I am not clear about how to best make them fit together. Comments appreciated. (RGForbes (talk) 00:41, 15 February 2009 (UTC))

The sections described above as "too mathematical" have now been replaced by material that (although covering the same physical ground and more) is derived in a different scientific way that allows much simpler mathematics to be used. (RGForbes (talk) 18:52, 22 February 2009 (UTC))

Is most of the main article plagiarized?

The main page has the look and feel of something that may have been copied from a text book. Has anyone checked if the content was plagiarized, and whether it complies with Wikipedia copyright policy? DFH (talk) 13:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

It looks and feels plaigiarized because (1) it appears to be written by an expert, and (2) it has stylistic attributes that don't conform well to the usual wikipedia article. There's a simple explanation! It was written over the past few weeks by RGForbes (talk · contribs), who (1) is an expert, and (2) hasn't edited wikipedia much before now. If you look through the edit history, you'll see ample evidence of that. :-) --Steve (talk) 02:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Steve is dead right, on all points. I would add, however, that you won't find a textbook out there that covers this material in this way. This might be regarded as a deficiency in the scientific literature of this subject area. Part of the point of revising the existing article on field emission was to see if this is a better way (better than writing a new conventional textbook, or some sort of tutorial review article) of getting the information in the second part of the revised article out to people whom you might describe as "beginning technical specialists". It certainly can be made to happen quicker. (RGForbes (talk) 02:46, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

Some missing topics

I'd make two observations on this exposition, particularly the FN part:

(1) The emphasis on finding solutions using complicated functions seems way overemphasized. Surely a simple numerical analysis would lead to answers of good accuracy with less headache.

(2) The main problems with this entire approach to modeling is that it leaves out important physical effects. Among these, but not limited to these, are (i) the problem is not one dimensional but involves the three dimensional structure of the emitting surface, and (ii) the emission process involves the screening or image charge of the emitted electron, and the screening response is time dependent in a manner determined in part by the nature of the emitting surface and in part by the rate of emission.

In sum, the article gives the appearance of being a very complete and exact presentation, when it really is not: it's just pedantic. Brews ohare (talk) 23:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Not sure if this is really the best place to discuss these issues but here goes.

Re: (1). Virtually all the applied research in this area makes use of equations rather than numerical evaluations of the Schroedinger equation - so it's possibly a good idea to put a discussion/proof/derivation of these equations on Wikipedia. My guess is that it's one place where students starting in the subject are likely to look. You could equally well use numerical methods (and you would have to, for anything more complicated than the two conventional models described here). But to get most experimentalists to use numerical methods, someone has to write a "standard" programme, validate it, and make it freely available. This is yet to happen. Some of the equations given here (or, to be more precise, more sophisticated and accurate versions of them) can be implemented on a spreadsheet. This is possibly the easiest way to do calculations based on the two conventional tunnelling barrier models discussed here.

Re: (2). What's here is an up-to-date version of the BASIC (one-dimensional) theory of cold field electron emission from bulk metals. That's what the mathematical part of the article is about. Details of many more-advanced things are omitted, including those mentioned in (2). I doubt if Wikipedia is the place for these, but (for example) you will find discussions about more sophisticated physical treatments of flat atomically structured surfaces in the references given to "advanced treatments of CFE from metals". These appear to create a correction factor [the "lambda-B"] probably between 0.1 and 1, almost certainly between 0.01 and 10. No-one has done much reliable work on the theory of 3-D emitters, but what will happen here is that the notional emission area in CFE equations would have to be adjusted. Time-lag in correlation-and-exchange (or screening/image-charge) effects will presumably come into the theory mainly via a change in the correction-factor "nu_F". I'm not aware that any reliable research on this issue has yet been done in the context of field electron emission, but it may be out there. Certainly, it would be a good idea to look at this, but it wouldn't be first on my list of priorities.

A more general comment that a lot of the physics on Wikipedia is accepted mainstream physics, where the "right" answers are known, but field electron emission is much more "frontier physics" with many things still unknown and a bit messy. It is, however, important technical physics, so we need to do the best we can. Suggestions for improvement welcome. (RGForbes (talk) 01:47, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

split

This article is over 100k, over the 32k line where the "long article" warning starts popping up, and it is visually long, so probably should be split into subarticles. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 05:52, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the article should focus on the physics and history, with the applications either merged with existing articles or used for creating new articles. There can be a brief section on applications that directs readers to these other places or it can be part of the intro.

Also, for Wikipedia guidelines re size, see WP:SIZE.--Bob K31416 (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup

The tone of this article, since expansion is somewhat different from what an encyclopedia article should be like, and the reference style is not what Wikipedia usually uses, so this article needs cleanup. A "Further reading" section should be cleanly separated from sources, citations and other references. 76.66.193.69 (talk) 05:52, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

This article is a disaster. Feel free to go for it. --KP Botany (talk) 07:34, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Separate "Further reading" section created (RGForbes (talk) 21:13, 23 March 2009 (UTC))

Here's a link to a tool for making citations that I have found very useful. [1] For more more info on citations for Wikipedia, see WP:CITE. (The comment regarding "disaster" is an imprudent and unhelpful remark.) --Bob K31416 (talk) 11:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Is this an "electronics" article ?

This topic was classified by the people who wrote earlier versions as a "quantum mechanics" article. But someone has now suggested that that it could also be classified as an "Electronics" article. I think the underlying problem is that this topic does not fall easily into existing categories, because it has a "technical physics/applied physics" flavour about it, and covers both theory and applications of a specific effect. Does Wikipedia need a separate category (probably a physics category) for topics of this kind ? There are other topics of the same general kind, for example "vacuum breakdown", "discharge physics", "lightning protection". (RGForbes (talk) 21:13, 23 March 2009 (UTC))

Looks more like physics to me. You can also discuss these questions at WT:WikiProject Physics where there's more traffic. I'd suggest WT:WikiProject Electronics too but there's not much discussion there, although if you post something, it might attract editors. --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:31, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

My attempt to clean up the page

On June 15, 2009, I made a desperate attempt to clean up the query "Field electron emission." This was indeed recommended by the editors in March 2009 because the query is too long and is written in substandard language. In particular, I tried to change its clumsy title to a more agreeable "Field Emission", but also to excise unnecessary information and standardize the terminology. Instead of thanks I was accused of vandalism and my changes were mostly canceled or left in the intermediate stage of editing. Please, review all consequent changes and realize that I seriously worked to improve the query. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Komsomolka (talk • contribs) 02:55, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I already explained on your talk page that I misinterpreted your strange edit of the Field emission redirect as vandalism, and that if you want to move the article you should propose that here. None of your other changes were undone, except that I removed the first heading, as the standard format is to not have a heading before the lead section. Dicklyon (talk) 04:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Wondering if we should add an EEPROM section?

Hi, I was reading up on read-only memory and I was directed to this page by the EEPROM page. I saw no mention of Fowler–Nordheim tunneling being used as a type of method to write/erase memory. If you guys don't mind, I would like to add an engineering section mentioning the practical uses of field electron emission for anyone else that is curious about it or wanted to learn more. I am still learning myself, but I think it would be useful/interesting for anyone that resides in the electronics field. Here is the link to the article I was directed from. I understand that this is already a lengthy article, so I will drop by later when I can to do some clean up. I will remove any information that I feel doesn't pertain to FEE. Feel free to write me if you guys disagree with any of the edits. I just kind of had to tread through a mile of text to find no information relating to what I was searching for.Ironstove (talk) 06:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

LETS HAVE A REAL ARTICLE ON FIELD EMISSION As a sometime engineer and physicist, who had hoped for meat, not theoretical poison, this is a terrible article, all math, no pictures, and few or erroneous practical observations. Where, for example, is a photo of the emission pattern from a point? Where is a recognition that field emission occurs in so-called cold cathode light bulbs from the fields generated by a positive ion plasma next to the cathode?

I would take issue with the idea that articles should be devoid of real meat in order to cater to some presumed stupidity of the user. But this is the oppostite problem. It does not contain much information because the only presumed users are math majors and students of theoretical physics.Whillier (talk) 16:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Whillier

Questions

From the first paragraph - "FE can take place from solid or liquid surfaces, into vacuum, air, a fluid, or any non-conducting or weakly conducting dielectric." - Why is it important to have a non-conducting media for the emission of electrons? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MetalGeek71 (talk • contribs) 15:23, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

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Splitting proposal

The article is over 12k words of readable prose this is over the recommendedWP:SIZE. I suggest that we split all sections from "Fowler–Nordheim tunneling" to "Fowler–Nordheim plots and Millikan–Lauritsen plots" to Fowler–Nordheim theory or Fowler–Nordheim tunneling. ReyHahn (talk) 13:26, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Support Even independent of size the logic of the split makes sense. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:38, 15 November 2024 (UTC)