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Fabrication, microstructure, and enhanced thermionic electron emission properties of vertically aligned nitrogen-doped nanocrystalline diamond nanorods

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the financial support of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) via Research Grant 12I8416N and Research Project 1519817N, and the Methusalem "NANO" network. The Hercules Foundation Flanders is acknowledged for financial support of the Raman equipment. The Qu-Ant-EM microscope used for the TEM experiments was partly funded by the Hercules fund from the Flemish Government. S.K. and J.V. acknowledge funding from GOA project “Solarpaint” of the University of Antwerp. K.J. Sankaran and P. Pobedinskas are Postdoctoral Fellows of FWO.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Materials Research (IMO), Hasselt University, 3590, Diepenbeek, Belgium

    Kamatchi Jothiramalingam Sankaran & Ken Haenen

  2. Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, NH-91, Tehsil Dadri, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, 201314, India

    Sujit Deshmukh & Susanta Sinha Roy

  3. Electron Microscopy for Materials Science (EMAT), University of Antwerp, 2020, Antwerp, Belgium

    Svetlana Korneychuk & Johan Verbeeck

  4. Department of Engineering and System Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Chien-Jui Yeh & Keh-Chyang Leou

  5. WATLab and Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, N2L3G1, Ontario, Canada

    Joseph Palathinkal Thomas & Kam-Tong Leung

  6. Institute for Materials Research (IMO), Hasselt University, 3590, Diepenbeek, Belgium

    Sien Drijkoningen, Paulius Pobedinskas & Marlies K. Van Bael

  7. Department of Physics, Tamkang University, Tamsui, 251, Taiwan, Republic of China

    I-Nan Lin

  8. IMOMEC, IMEC vzw, 3590, Diepenbeek, Belgium

    Kamatchi Jothiramalingam Sankaran, Paulius Pobedinskas, Marlies K. Van Bael & Ken Haenen

Authors
  1. Kamatchi Jothiramalingam Sankaran
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  2. Sujit Deshmukh
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  3. Svetlana Korneychuk
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  8. Marlies K. Van Bael
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  9. Johan Verbeeck
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  10. Keh-Chyang Leou
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  11. Kam-Tong Leung
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  12. Susanta Sinha Roy
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  13. I-Nan Lin
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  14. Ken Haenen
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kamatchi Jothiramalingam Sankaran or Ken Haenen.

Appendices

Supplementary material

The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2018.158

Author contributions

K.J.S., K.H., and I.N. Lin conceived and designed the experiments, synthesized the samples and wrote the manuscript with inputs from all the co-authors. S.D., P.P., and M.K.V.B. performed the SEM and Raman spectroscopy measurements. S.D. and S.S.R. performed the KPFM imaging experiments. S.K., J.V., C.J.Y., and K.C.L. performed the electron microscopic imaging and EEL spectroscopy measurements. J.P.T. and K.T.L. performed the XPS measurements.

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Sankaran, K.J., Deshmukh, S., Korneychuk, S. et al. Fabrication, microstructure, and enhanced thermionic electron emission properties of vertically aligned nitrogen-doped nanocrystalline diamond nanorods. MRS Communications 8, 1311–1320 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2018.158

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2018.158

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