On the Properties of Hydrogen Terminated Diamond as a Photocathode

Abstract

Electron emission from the negative electron affinity (NEA) surface of hydrogen terminated, boron doped diamond in the [100] orientation is investigated using angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). ARPES measurements using 16 eV synchrotron and 6 eV laser light are compared and found to show a catastrophic failure of the sudden approximation. While the high energy photoemission is found to yield little information regarding the NEA, low energy laser ARPES reveals for the first time that the NEA results from a novel Franck-Condon mechanism coupling electrons in the conduction band to the vacuum. The result opens the door to development of a new class of NEA electron emitters based on this effect.

Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters on Thursday Mar 03, 2011 4 pages, 4 figures, 22 references

References in corpus (3)

• Phonon laser action in a tunable, two-level photonic molecule
• Coupling of Low Energy Electrons in Optimally Doped Bi2212 to an Optical Phonon Mode
• Novel theoretical approach in photoemission spectroscopy: application to isotope effect and boron-doped diamond

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Electronic structure of quantum materials studied by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
• Spectroscopic signatures of nonpolarons : the case of diamond
• Spectral Emission Properties of a Nitrogen-doped Diamond(001) Photocathode: Hot Electron Transport and Transverse Momentum Filtering
• Franck-Condon electron emission from polar semiconductor photocathodes