Electrostatically focused addressable field emission array chips (AFEA's) for high-speed massively parallel maskless digital E-beam direct write lithography and scanning electron microscopy

An addressable field-emission array, comprising:

• a plurality of addressable emitters;
• an on-chip electrostatic focusing stack coupled to said plurality of addressable emitters;
• a plurality of detectors coupled to said plurality of addressable emitters;
• and a plurality of current copier circuits, each of said plurality of current copier circuits electrically connected to one of said plurality of addressable emitters.

An addressable field-emission array comprising:

• a plurality of addressable emitters;
• a plurality of detectors coupled to said plurality of addressable emitters;
• and
• a plurality of current copier circuits, each of said plurality of current copier circuits electrically connected to one of said plurality of addressable emitters.

A method of operating an addressable field-emission array, comprising:

• individually addressing each of said plurality of individually addressable emitters with a plurality of current copier circuits;
• generating a plurality of electron beams from a plurality of individually addressable emitters that compose said addressable field-emission array;
• and
• focusing at least one of said plurality of electron beams with an electrostatic focusing stack,
• wherein the plurality of individually addressable emitters and the electrostatic focusing stack are integrated on the addressable field-emission array.

A method of operating an addressable field-emission array, comprising:

• generating a plurality of electron beams from a plurality of emitters that compose said addressable field-emission array;
• and
• focusing at least one of said plurality of electron beams with an on-chip electrostatic focusing stack;
• individually addressing each of said plurality of emitters;
• and
• controlling said plurality of emitters with a logical shift register and current regulator circuit.