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CH4/(Ar–H2) plasma post-treatments produce nano-diamond aggregation and improvement in field emission properties of ultrananocrystalline diamond films

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Abstract

We performed the CH4/(Ar–H2) plasma post-treatments on ultrananocrystalline diamond films prepared by hot filament chemical vapor deposition. The results show that during the CH4/(Ar–H2) plasma treatment, 3–5 nm diamond grains agglomerate and regrow, and the graphite between the grains transformed into diamond due to the combined action of hydrogen and tantalum atoms in the samples. This produces bigger diamond grains in size of 200 nm with a large number of stacking faults formed during the grain aggregation, and the graphite phase is greatly reduced. Moreover, the electron field emission (EFE) performance of the films is significantly improved after the CH4/(Ar–H2) plasma treatment. This suggests that the improved EFE performance is not caused by the graphite phase, but by the diamond grains with lots of stacking faults that provide transport channels for electrons. This provides a method for enhancing the EFE properties of diamond films.

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The data sets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52102052 and 52002351), the Key Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U1809210), the One Belt and One Road International Cooperation Project from Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (Grant No. 2018C04021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310014, People’s Republic of China

    ChengKe Chen, Yizhong Zhang, Meiyan Jiang, Xiao Li, Shaohua Lu & Xiaojun Hu

  2. Moganshan Diamond Research Center, De Qing, Hu Zhou, 313200, People’s Republic of China

    ChengKe Chen, Yizhong Zhang, Meiyan Jiang, Xiao Li, Shaohua Lu & Xiaojun Hu

  3. Diamond Joint Research Center, Zhejiang University of Technology and Tanghe Scientific & Technology Company, De Qing, Hu Zhou, 313200, People’s Republic of China

    ChengKe Chen, Yizhong Zhang, Meiyan Jiang, Xiao Li, Shaohua Lu & Xiaojun Hu

  4. Department of Engineering System and Science, National Tsing-Hua University, 30071, Hsinchu, Taiwan, People’s Republic of China

    Chien-Ray Yeh

  5. College of Science, Tamkang University, 251301, Taipei, Taiwan, People’s Republic of China

    I.-Nan Lin

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  1. ChengKe Chen
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Contributions

XH: contributed in funding acquisition, conceptualization, supervision, writing, reviewing, and editing. CC: took care of investigation, data curation, writing the original draft, and visualization. YZ: took care of investigation, data curation, and writing the original draft. CRY: took care of investigation and data curation. INL: took care of writing, reviewing, and editing. MJ: took care of writing, reviewing, and editing. XL: took care of writing, reviewing, and editing. SL: took care of writing, reviewing, and editing.

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Correspondence to Xiaojun Hu.

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Chen, C., Zhang, Y., Yeh, CR. et al. CH4/(Ar–H2) plasma post-treatments produce nano-diamond aggregation and improvement in field emission properties of ultrananocrystalline diamond films. Appl. Phys. A 130, 47 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-07193-w

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