Local field electron emission from grain boundaries of CVD diamond film

In this article. we have investigated local field electron emission from grain boundaries of diamond films with (100) preferential orientation by double-probe scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Compared with the field emission from the plane area of diamond film, local field emission from grain boundary area is greatly enhanced at the same applied field, and further increased with the increasing of grain boundary number density. This result provides a direct evidence that grain boundary plays an important role in field emission from diamond film because a great deal of Sp(2) graphitic carbon phases exists in grain boundary areas as electron transport channels for the surface field emission process. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.