Ultrananocrystalline diamond-decorated silicon nanowire field emitters

Silicon nanowires (SiNWs) were uniformly decorated with ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) by a novel route using paraffin wax as the seeding source, which is more efficient in the creation of diamond nuclei than traditional methods. These one-dimensional ultrananocrystalline diamond-decorated SiNWs (UNCD/SiNWs) exhibit uniform diameters ranging from 100 to 200 nm with a bulbous catalytic tip of ∼250 nm in diameter and an UNCD grain size of ∼5 nm. UNCD/SiNW nanostructures demonstrated enhanced electron field emission (EFE) properties with a turn-on field of about 3.7 V/μm. Current densities around 2 mA/cm(2) were achieved at 25 V/μm, which is significantly enhanced as compared to bare SiNWs.