Diamond-Based Field-Emission Displays

Abstract

Diamond has existed in the natural state for thousands of years. It was mainly used as a jewel for its optical brilliance and for its hardness. In the 1950s methods were developed to fabricate synthetic diamonds commercially. This greatly increased diamond's industrial use, mostly for grinding and lapping applications. Diamond is a crystalline form of carbon, a group-IV element in the periodic table. Silicon and germanium are also Group-IV elements and also have the same crystalline lattice structure as diamond. Hence there has been theoretical interest in diamond's electronic properties since the beginning of the semiconductor age. However the cost and poor crystalline quality of both natural and synthetic diamond have precluded any real industrial interest in diamond as an electronic material. Methods of low-temperature and low-pressure diamond-film deposition, developed initially by the Russians in the 1950s and 1960s (and thence by the Japanese, and eventually by others) has made it possible to use this exotic material as an electronic substrate. Diamond, in single-crystalline, polycrystalline, and diamondlike carbon (DLC) forms, is a material with many unusual properties. It is the hardest naturally occurring material, the most thermally conductive, and the most transparent. It also has the slickness of Teflon. In regard to many physical properties, it is at the extreme end of the scale. One of the more unusual and important properties that it possesses is its presentation of a rather small barrier to the emission of electrons into a vacuum.