Diamond Sensors and Vacuummicroelectronics

ABSTRACTThis paper will cover two diverse electronic applications for which diamond devices have shown great promise. The first application is diamond radiation sensors for high radiation environments, where the competition is mainly silicon devices. These environments arise in high energy physics experiments, and tests show diamond to be superior to silicon in many ways. The second application is vacuum microelectronics, which generally refers to field emission, where the main competitor is metal and semiconductor microtip arrays. Certain diamond and diamondlike carbon materials emit electrons readily, but the physical mechanisms for this are not well understood. Negative electron affinity and other possible explanations are discussed in this paper.