Enhancement of plasma illumination characteristics of few-layer graphenediamond nanorods hybrid

Abstract

Few-layer graphene (FLG) was catalytically formed on vertically aligned diamond nanorods (DNRs) by a high temperature annealing process. The presence of 4–5 layers of FLG on DNRs was confirmed by transmission electron microscopic studies. It enhances the field electron emission (FEE) behavior of the DNRs. The FLG-DNRs show excellent FEE characteristics with a low turn-on field of 4.21 V μm−1 and a large field enhancement factor of 3480. Moreover, using FLG-DNRs as cathode markedly enhances the plasma illumination behavior of a microplasma device, viz not only the plasma current density is increased, but also the robustness of the devices is improved.