in the p region next to the dielectric layer these electrons are generated as a result of the avalanche in the p d m structure or injection processes in the n p d m structure these emitters are stable since they make use of relatively low extracting field in the vacuum region and are not affected by contamination and absorption from accelerated ions in addition the structures may be fabricated with current state of the art technology application_number US 97529701 A description for simplicity and illustrative purposes the principles of the present invention are described by referring mainly to exemplary embodiments thereof in the following description numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention it will be apparent however to one of ordinary skill in the art that the present invention may be practiced without limitation to these specific details in other instances well known methods and structure have not been described in detail so as not to unnecessarily obscure the present invention 0029 fig2 a illustrates an exemplary cross section of a first embodiment of a cold emitter 200 according to an aspect of the present invention the cold emitter 200 may generally be characterized as having an p d m structure due to the presence of a p region 230 dielectric layer 245 and a metallic layer 240 as shown in fig2 a the cold emitter 200 may include a substrate 210 and the p region 230 formed above the substrate 210 the p region 230 may be formed from a semiconductor for which si is the preferred material the p region 230 may also be formed from.