Abstract
The authors present recent advances in the uniformity conditioning of diamond field emitter arrays (DFEAs). Postfabrication conditioning procedures consisting of thermal annealing and high field/current operation have been examined. Nonuniformity due to varying contamination states of the emitters can be mitigated by moderate temperature (∼150–300°C) operation. Operating the emitters at elevated current levels was found to enhance the spatial uniformity in a self-limiting manner. The conditioning mechanism is most likely thermal-assisted field evaporation of the diamond nanotips, however, the nature of the dc tests does not definitively exclude back bombardment as a possible contributor. Pulsed testing is underway to remove this ambiguity, provide conditioning for high-density arrays, and demonstrate the operational current density limits of DFEAs.
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