Electron emission from nitrogen-doped polycrystalline diamond/Si heterostructures

The field electron emission from polycrystalline diamond/silicon and nitrogen-doped polycrystalline diamond/silicon structures obtained by HF CVD deposition method has been investigated. Electron emission currents from the samples were measured in a chamber at the pressure equal to 2·10−6 Pa in sphere-to-plane diode configuration with the 5 μm distance between electrodes. As expected, the results confirm the relation between the structure of diamond films and their emission properties. The type of silicon substrate also influences the value of emission currents and the diamond/n-Si heterostructures exhibit better electron emission than diamond/p-Si ones. The nitrogen doping significantly enhances the electron emission from the heterostructures and their emission parameters. The values of the threshold field between 2 V/μm and 3 V/μm were registered, the values of emission current close to 1 mA/cm2 at 5 V/μm for the nitrogen-doped films were obtained. The shape of current-voltage characteristics for nitrogen-doped polycrystalline films may be interpreted in terms of stochastic distribution of diameters of conducting channels which form the emission centers.