Ns. Xu et al., An initiation mechanism of thermal instability of a metal-diamond-vacuum field emission regime, APPL PHYS L, 75(16), 1999, pp. 2383-2385
An analysis is carried out of the physical origin of thermal instability th
at can trigger a catastrophic vacuum breakdown event in vacuum microelectro
nic devices based on flat diamond emitters. The temperature rise in a diamo
nd film will enhance internal field emission across metal-diamond interface
. This effect can lead to a regenerative process that can initiate a breakd
own event at temperature lower than the melting point of an emitter. A set
of equations has been developed. These theoretical findings are successfull
y applied to explain the instability of field emission from the nondoped di
amond films. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)01942-7
].