Photoemission properties of nanocrystalline diamond thin films on silicon

Abstract

The authors have built up a dedicated ultrahigh vacuum setup to measure ultraviolet (266 nm photons) photoemission properties of nanocrystalline diamond thin films obtained by chemical vapor deposition on silicon substrates. The authors validated their setup by measuring polycrystalline copper quantum efficiency of ∼10−6, which is in good agreement with literature. The authors also measured quantum efficiency of bare silicon (highly p and n doped) and demonstrate strong influence of doping type. The authors then measured quantum efficiency of silicon samples coated with submicron (50 and 100 nm thick) nanocrystalline diamond layers. This coating reveals to have major influence on the photoemission properties when deposited on highly n-doped silicon samples. The authors obtain quantum yield as high as 1.60 × 10−5. The relatively high quantum efficiency of such structure associated with its high stability in air and easy processing make it a good candidate as fast electron source for electron gun based systems such as scanning/transmission electron microscopes or x-ray sources.