Vertically aligned nitrogen-doped nanocrystalline diamond nanorods are fabricated from nitrogen-doped nanocrystalline diamond films using reactive ion etching in oxygen plasma. These nanorods show enhanced thermionic electron emission (TEE) characteristics, viz., a high current density of 12.0 mA/cm2 and a work function value of 4.5 eV with an applied voltage of 3 V at 923 K. The enhanced TEE characteristics of these nanorods are ascribed to the induction of nanographitic phases at the grain boundaries and the field penetration effect through the local field enhancement from nanorods owing to a high aspect ratio and an excellent field enhancement factor. Copyright © Materials Research Society 2018.

Susanta Sinha Roy

Physics

(SoNS) School of Natural Sciences

Sankaran K.J.

Deshmukh S.

Korneychuk S.

Yeh C.-J.

Thomas J.P.

Drijkoningen S.

Pobedinskas P.

Van Bael M.K.

Verbeeck J.

Leou K.-C.

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MRS Communications

A detailed conductive atomic force microscopic investigation is carried out to directly image the electron emission behavior for nitrogen-doped diamond nanorods (N-DNRs). Localized emission measurements illustrate uniform distribution of high-density electron emission sites from N-DNRs. Emission sites coupled to nanographitic phases at the grain boundaries facilitate electron transport and thereby enhance field electron emission from N-DNRs, resulting in a device operation at low turn-on fields of 6.23 V/μm, a high current density of 1.94 mA/cm2 (at an applied field of 11.8 V/μm) and a large field enhancement factor of 3320 with a long life-time stability of 980 min. Moreover, using N-DNRs as cathodes, a microplasma device that can ignite a plasma at a low threshold field of 390 V/mm achieving a high plasma illumination current density of 3.95 mA/cm2 at an applied voltage of 550 V and a plasma life-time stability for a duration of 433 min was demonstrated. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

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