Electron field emission from a patterned diamond-like carbon flat thin film using a Ti interfacial layer

Abstract

Noise characteristics of emission current from conductive diamond-like carbon thin films coating on cone shaped silicon field emitters Electron field emission from a patterned diamondlike carbon flat cathode A 200-nm-thick diamond-like carbon film was prepared on Ti-deposited Si (Ͻ0.01 ⍀ cm͒ using a filtered arc deposition technique. Field-emission properties of it are enhanced as compared to films deposited on Si, showing an increased current and emission site density (ϳ1.2ϫ10 3 /cm 2 ). A patterned diamond-like carbon flat thin film on Ti-deposited Si fabricated by the oxygen reactive ion-beam etching technique shows further enhanced field-emission properties. An emission site density of 3ϫ10 3 /cm 2 was obtained. Field emission could be observed at a field value as low as 2.1 V/m. It is shown that the low potential barrier at the interface and high local geometric electric field enhancement around the edges produced by reactive ion-beam etching are possible causes for the enhanced effects. It can also be explained by the Geis' metal-diamond-vacuum triple junction emission mechanism.

Field electron emission enhancement of amorphous carbon through a niobium carbide buffer layer

“…Some efforts have been made to improve the emission properties of a-C films and most work has focused on the surface treatment, 8 doping, [9][10][11] and the quality of the films in order to improve their field emission properties. However, so far, there have been only a few reports about how buffer layer between a-C film and substrate does influence the field emission of carbon films, where Ti, 12 Au, 13 Al, and Cu ͑Ref. 14͒ layers have been used as a buffer layer, respectively.…”

Electric-Field Emission Mechanism in Q-Carbon Field Emitters

“…4 The use of diamondlike carbon (DLC) films as a cold cathode material is also limited owing to their low FE current density and high threshold fields. 15 Nonetheless, the carbon-based conjugated polymer (poly 3-octyl-thiophene) films have demonstrated a very low turn-on field and good current density, but the current density drops to 55% of its initial value in 2 h which makes this material incompetent for practical applications. 16 Field-emission efficiency of an emitting material depends upon a combination of factors which includes the conductivity of the emitter, mechanical and electrical stability under large electric fields, the surface work function, and the resistance of the emitter/substrate interface.…”

“…Recently, various laser processing techniques have been discovered to grow various metastable forms of carbon with hierarchical structural morphologies. − Moreover, complex and expensive microfabrication and processing techniques, such as patterning and/or etching of diamonds to give suitable pyramid or needle shapes, are usually required to obtain a large field-enhancement factor in diamonds . The use of diamond-like carbon (DLC) films as a cold cathode material is also limited owing to their low FE current density and high threshold fields . Nonetheless, the carbon-based conjugated polymer (poly 3-octyl-thiophene) films have demonstrated a very low turn-on field and good current density, but the current density drops to 55% of its initial value in 2 h which makes this material incompetent for practical applications …”

One-Step Preparation of Hierarchical Structures Using a Dissipative Process

“…Various production methods such as conventional lithography (Ito and Okazaki, 2000), soft lithography (Haginoya et al, 1997), self-assembly (Karthaus et al, 2000;Yamashita, 2001;Ye et al, 2001;Yi et al, 2002;Pileni, 2005), are used to obtain nanoscale to microscale architectures. These architectures are considered extremely important from the viewpoints of biointerfaces, photonic crystals (Ohtaka, 1979;Joannopoulos et al, 1995;Fujimura et al, 2000;Matsushita et al, 2000;Fudouzi and Xia, 2003), electron emitters (Mao et al, 2000;Talin et al, 2001;Okuyama et al, 2002), high-density optical storage media (Micheletto et al, 1995), and catalytic systems (Matsushita et al, 1998). Among them, since Prigogine won the novel prize in 1977, a dissipative process became much attractive from scientific and technological interests.…”