Field emission properties of nanocrystalline carbon films generated in microwave gas discharge plasma

Abstract

The carbon film synthesis in a low-pressure microwave (MW) gas discharge plasma is one of promising procedures to obtain carbon electronics materials used in device operating under extreme conditions. This is due to the fact that, by its nature, carbon can generate materials with various chemical bond types compatible, in limiting cases, to the allotropic modifications of graphite, diamond, fullerenes, carbine, and others. The intent of the work was to find operating conditions for generating and modifying carbon layers which provide for necessary field emission properties of film graphite-like nano and microcrystalline materials. The carbon films were deposited at glass substrates from the ethanol vapour plasma. We studied the phase composition, electrophysical properties, microtopography, and field emission of carbon films obtained under different plasma generation regimes.