Resonant Tunneling Behaviour in the I-V Response of Multilayered Nanocarbon Based Field Assisted Electron Emitters

Summary form only given. There is an increasing interest in carbon based nanostructured materials like the nanodiamond, nanotubes, nanocluster and nanowall carbon. The interest stems from the diverse fields of application envisaged for these materials which include, vacuum microelectronics, energy storage systems, MEMS, electronics, nanotechnology and sensors. Recently, these materials including nanocrystalline diamond, nanotubes and nanocluster carbon have all been widely reported as low field electron emitters. Most of these nanocarbons have been grown using high temperature process such as hot filament CVD, thermal CVD, microwave plasma CVD and Plasma CVD. In an effort to develop a low temperature grown carbon based field assisted electron emitters. We observe that under optimum conditions nanodiamond and nanocluster carbon based multilayered films exhibit relatively low field electron emission of 1 V/mum. Further, some of the samples seem to exhibit I-V characteristics, with a negative differential resistance region at room temperature conditions. This negative differential resistance or the resonant tunneling type behaviour was observed to be dependent on the nanoseeded diamond size and concentration for a given nanocluster carbon film. Further we observe similar behaviour in the case of thin silicon dioxide layer and carbon nanotube based multilayered electron emitters. Presented is a possible mechanism for such behaviour in these nanomaterial based multilayered devices