Diamond Nanowires Array Prepared by Annealing Nano-Crystalline Diamond in Air and Its Application in Field Emission

This paper reports the field emission (FE) properties of a novel array of diamond nanowires (DNWs). The DNWs structure was prepared by annealing the nano-crystalline diamond (NCD) films obtained by MPCVD in air, and the surface hydrogenation was realized by using hydrogen plasma. A flat anode was fabricated by micromachining, and assembled respectively with NCD film and nanowire cathodes to achieve a FE test structure with a gap of 1.03 μm. The FE properties of NCD films and DNWs were tested under a vacuum of 2.6×10 ^-4 Pa. The results show that the FE current density of the DNWs array is as high as 174 mA/cm ² and the turn-on field is as low as 2.3 V/μm, which is significantly better than that of the NCD film.