Field Emission Characteristics of Nitrogen-Doped and Micro-Patterned Diamond-Like Carbon Films Prepared by Pulsed Laser Deposition

Effect of nitrogen doping on field emission characteristics of patterned Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) films was studied. The patterned DLC films were fabricated by the method reported previously[1]. Nitrogen doping in DLC film was carried out by introducing $N_2$ gas into the vacuum chamber during deposition. Higher emission current density of $0.3{\sim}0.4$ $mA/cm^2$ was observed for the films with 6 at % N than the undoped films but the emission current density decreased with further increase of N contents. Some changes in CN bonding characteristics with increasing N contents were observed. The CN bonding characteristics which seem to affect the electron emission properties of these films were studied by Raman spectroscopy, x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The electrical resistivity and the optical band gap measurements showed consistence with the above analyses.