Electron emission from nitrogen-doped pyramidal-shape diamond and its battery operation

Although the low-threshold emission from polycrystalline diamond heavily doped with nitrogen has been proposed in our previous report, this is the first report on a practical diamond cold cathode, having pyramidal-shape array structure, promising for battery-driven flat panel displays. We have used urea [(NH3)(2)CO] as dopant and grown diamond using hot filament chemical vapor deposition technique, and the mold-based technique is used in order to obtain the pyramidal-shape array structure. The obtained pyramids are identified as diamond from the results of Auger electron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The turn-on field as low as 0.2-0.3 V/mu m and the remarkably high stability in the emission properties have been confirmed. In addition, the battery operation of the cathode has been demonstrated. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.