Electron Emission Mechanism of Diamond

Abstract

Clarifying the electron emission mechanism of diamond is one of the remaining problems for the realization of diamond cold cathodes for vacuum nano-electronics applications. Diamond is well known to have negative electron affinity (NEA) and an electric field of less than 1 V/mum is required to extract electrons from the surface, whereas much higher field is needed for the conventional metal emitter tips. However, there have been only few reports attempting to clarify the mechanism based on the experimental results. In this study, a combined spectroscopy of XPS/UPS/FES was performed to characterise the electron emission mechanism of diamond. As a result, we have succeeded in drawing the energy band diagram to explain the electron emission from various types of diamond