Field-emission in diamond-like carbon films grown by various techniques

175-182<span style="font-size: 15.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.0pt;font-family:" times="" new="" roman","serif""="">The field-emission measurements from ~0.5 μm thick hydrogenated amorphous carbon (diamond-like carbon) <span style="font-size:13.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:6.0pt; font-family:HiddenHorzOCR;mso-hansi-font-family:" times="" new="" roman";mso-bidi-font-family:="" hiddenhorzocr"="">films <span style="font-size:15.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.0pt;font-family:" times="" new="" roman","serif""="">grown by a variety of easily implementable plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) based techniques and also by a method that uses a saddle-field fast atom beam source, have been reported. Field-emission behaviour in these materials has been discussed in the light of residual stress, hardness, optical bandgap, and characteristic energy of band tails (Urbach energy). Onset emission fields as low as~ 6V/μm , together with low residual stress of 0.25 GPa, hardness of 17.5 GPa, optical bandgap of 1.5 eV and Urbach energy of 165 meV, have been obtained in diamond- like carbon films grown by pulsed-PECVD at 13.56 MHz. DLC films of comparable quality could also be grown using a saddle-field fast atom beam source, which operates on modest de power supply and with no heated filaments or magnets.