Field emission from diamond particles studied by scanning field emission microscopy

Field emission properties from diamond particles (DPs) are studied. The DPs with thin chemically vapor deposited (CVD) diamond overcoat, dispersed onto metal substrate, essentially exhibit negative electron affinity (NEA). Field emission, approximately 1 mA/cm2 under a macroscopic electric field of 3.5 kV/mm are observed. Microscopic electrical properties were studied by scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. Most parts of the DP surface exhibit narrow gap and p-type characteristics. The localized regions, which have wide gap like bulk diamond properties, are randomly distributed near the top of DP. The field emission current distribution depicted by scanning field emission microscopy (SFEM) show that the electron emission is originating from a localized region on the selected DPs. We found, through SFEM measurement, some favorable field emission spots (“hot spots”) where measured emission current is several orders higher than that of the other DPs (“normal spots”). Field emission spectroscopy (FES) results suggest that a poorly conducting layer is present along the electron path from the metal electrode to vacuum. pose two models for field emission from “hot spots”, which involve two main mechanisms. One is electron injection from the metal substrate to the DP, which is attributed to the electric field enhancement at intrinsic non-doped diamond (i-diamond) layer sandwiched between the metal substrate and the surface conductive layer (p-diamond) of the CVD diamond overcoat on the DP. The other is electron emission at the top site of NEA DP through the local i-diamond region or the depletion region of the p-diamond, which is caused by the applied electric field.