Enhanced Electron Emission Performance and Air-Surface Stability in ScO-Terminated Diamond for Thermionic Energy Converters

Diamond with negative electron affinity (NEA) and low work function surfaces are suggested as a suitable material for electron-generation applications in vacuum, in particular, as the emitter electrode in thermionic energy converters. Such NEA surfaces can be fabricated by evaporating and then annealing submonolayers of a suitable metal in vacuo onto bare or oxidized diamond. Among the metals studied, scandium termination of bare diamond (100) and (111) surfaces is recently reported to give the largest NEA values reported to date for a metal-diamond system, as well as being thermally stable to 900 °C. It is now shown that preoxidized (100) diamond functionalized with 0.25 monolayers of Sc also produces a large NEA value of −1.02 eV with low work functions (<3.63 eV). Moreover, this surface is thermally stable to 700 °C and can withstand exposure to air for extended periods. Here, the structural and electronic properties of this Sc-O-functionalized diamond surface are characterized in detail using a variety of surface-science techniques. The results suggest that this material may be the ideal candidate for the fabrication of commercial thermionic energy conversion devices, e.g., for solar-power generation, as well as for various other electronic devices that rely upon electron emission.