Mechanism of field emission from carbon materials

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Field emission in diamond and graphite-like polycrystalline films is investigated experimentally. It is shown that the emission efficiency increases as the nondiamond carbon phase increases; for graphite-like films the threshold electric field is less than 1.5 V/μm, and at 4 V/μm the emission current reaches 1 mA/cm2, while the density of emission centers exceeds 106 cm−2. A general mechanism explaining the phenomenon of electron field emission from materials containing graphite-like carbon is proposed.