Through depositing zinc sulphide (ZnS) nanoparticals on silicon nanoporous pillar array (Si-NPA) and crater-shaped silicon nanoporous pillar array (c-Si-NPA) by chemical bath deposition (CBD) method, ZnS/Si-NPA and c-ZnS/Si-NPA were prepared and the field emission (FE) properties of them were investigated. The turn-on electric fields of were 3.8 V/mm for ZnS/Si-NPA and 5.0 V/mm for c-ZnS/Si-NPA, respectively. The lower turn-on electric fields of ZnS/Si-NPA than that of c-ZnS/Si-NPA were attributed to the different electric distribution of the field emitters causing by the different surface morphology of the two samples, which was further demonstrated via the simulated results by finite element modeling. The FN curves for the ZnS/Si-NPA showed two-slope behavior. All the results indicate that the morphology play an important role in the FE properties and designing an appropriate top morphology for the emitter is a very efficient way to improve the FE performance. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.