摘要： Thermal effects associated with the thermal energy of electrons play an important role in the process of field emission. To estimate the contribution of these effects, a self-consistent numerical calculation of the temperature of the semiconductor emitter, heated by the field-emission current, was carried out. It was experimentally obtained that the melting of the silicon field emitter occurs at currents less than 1 μA, for which the calculated temperature of the silicon tip varies only up to 420 K and does not exceed the melting point of Si. For this reason, we suppose that this effect can be caused by the sputtering of the anode material by hot field-emitted electrons that collect a high power density (~300 W/cm2 at 1 μA) on the anode surface. It also can lead to the possible generation of self-sustained plasma in the space gap between anode and cathode. The considered thermal phenomena should be taken into account during the development and predictive modelling of vacuum nanoelectronic devices.