Little manufacturing development has taken place in thermionic cathodes since the mid 1980s; current research efforts are focused on miniaturization of cathodes and an alternate technology, field emission, or cold, cathodes. With the exception of electron guns for commercial CRTs, there has been no concerted effort in standardization, volume manufacturing, or component price reduction. Elcon's ultimate objective is to create a low-cost thermionic cathode manufacturing process to reduce component costs by fifty percent while meeting or exceeding the emission characteristics and lifetime of the best performing cathodes used in the vacuum electronics industry today. The phase I objective is successful manufacture of tri-layer structure using tape techniques and a model representing the R&D and commercial costs of manufacturing
