2018/11/10 by Stanislav S. Baturin, Stanislav S Baturin, Tanvi Nikhar +2 · 1 citation
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Carbon Nanotubes in Composites #Cathode #Cold cathode #Diamond #Diamond and Carbon-based Materials Research #Diode #Field electron emission #Glow discharge #Nanodiamond #Raman spectroscopy #Vacuum and Plasma Arcs #Vacuum arc #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1361-6463/ab2183
published as Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 52(32):325301 2019 · 6 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2018/11/10 · openalex created_date 2018/11/16 · openalex publication_date 2019/05/13 · arxiv updated 2019/06/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract The present paper extends the prior findings on self-induced heating of solid state field emission devices. It was found that a vacuum diode (base pressure ∼10 −9 Torr), that makes use of graphite-rich polycrystalline diamond as cathode material, can switch from a diode regime to a resistor regime to a glow discharge plasma regime without any external perturbation, i.e. all transitions are self-induced. Combined results of in situ field emission microscopy, ex situ electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy suggest that it is the nanodiamond cathode of the diode heated to about 3000 K which causes self-induced material evaporation, ionization and eventually micro-plasma formation. Our results confirm that field emission, commonly called cold emission, is a very complex phenomenon that can cause severe thermal load. Thermal load and material runaway could be the major factors causing vacuum diode deterioration, i.e. progressive increase in turn-on field, decrease in field enhancement factor, and eventual failure.