Field emission properties of diamond-like carbon films annealled at different temperatures [annealled read as annealed]

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin films have attracted much attention due to their unique properties (Robertson, 2002) for the application in the protective coating for magnetic recording disks and optical device. Recently, DLC films have been reported to have excellent field emission properties (Kiyota et al., 1999; Mammana et al., 2002) and the mechanism of field emission has been proposed (Ilie et al., 2000). The field emission properties of DCL films are mainly dependent on the variation of chemical structure bonding other than surface roughness and the doping. Although it is a fact that high temperature annealing can vary the chemical structure bonding of DLC films so that affect its field emission property, some controversies still existed in the relation between the chemical structure bonding states in the DLC films and its field emission properties. In this study, we report the effect of annealing inducing the chemical structural variations on the field emission properties of DCL films, and the possible mechanism is discussed.