Abstract
Diamond cold-cathode devices have demonstrated significant potential as electron field emitters. Ultra-sharp diamond pyramidal tips (~ 5 nm tip radius) have been fabricated, and show improvement in emission when compared to conventional field emitters. However, the emission mechanisms in these complex diamond nanostructures are not well understood. Transmission electron microscopy performed in this study provides new insight into tip structure and composition with implications for field emission and diamond growth.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 29-32 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | Diamond and Related Materials |
| Volume | 22 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2012 |
Funding
The authors would like to thank Dr. William Hofmeister and Dr. Lino Costa at the University of Tennessee Space Institute for assistance in attempting other methods of tip extraction. We are thankful for our ongoing collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory enabling access to advanced electron microscopy and FIB facilities via the SHaRE program. Research at the SHaRE User Facility is supported by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy, under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. Support at ORNL provided by Dr. James Bentley. This work was funded by the US Army research office grant # W911NF-10-1-0363 , US Department of Energy grant # DE-FG02-99ER45781 , and the US Department of Defense Extreme Light Source program.
Keywords
- Diamond film
- Field emission
- High resolutions electron microscopy
- Microstructure
- Nanostructures
- Plasma CVD
- Surface characterization