Emission Characteristics of Arrays of Diamondcoated Silicon Tips

The electron emission behavior of diamond-coated silicon whisker arrays was examined with a point-probe scanner and compared with the behavior of uncoated silicon whiskers as well as with diamond crystallites on a flat Si surface. Emission in all cases was inhomogeneous, and the emission site density was less than the whisker density. Both the diamond-coated and uncoated whiskers displayed a distribution of turn-on fields which peaked at around 10 V/µ, but the uncoated whiskers were observed to burn out if emission outputs exceeded 0.3 µA.