The effects of surface pretreatments on nucleation and growth of chemical vapor deposited diamond films were studied. The pretreatments included scratching with diamond grit, coating with a low vapor pressure, high thermal stability hydrocarbon oil, and coating with a 100–200-Å-thick layer of evaporated carbon. The effects of the treatments on carbide and noncarbide forming materials are described.

This letter reports on the measurement of the field emission current dependence of doped polycrystalline diamond (PCD) films on temperature. The motivation for this type of measurement was to assess the thermal stability of PCD field emitters and gain some insight into a possible emission mechanism. Between room temperature and 300 °C, for a fixed electric field, the emission current from B doped films was found to remain constant. Heavily doped nitrogen films were also examined and the emission current was found to increase exponentially with an activation energy of 0.16 eV.

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