Electrical conductivity of amorphous hydrogenated carbon

Electron Field Emission From Diamond-Like Carbon

The low electron affinity of a-C:H is related to that of diamond surfaces and is studied using a chemical bonding model. The electron field emission from hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C:H) and nitrogen modified a-C:H showing low turn on fields are described. Nitrogen improves the field emission, apparently by raising the Fermi level.

Doping Mechanism in Tetrahedral Amorphous Carbon

Doping in hydrogenated amorphous silicon occurs by a process of an ionised donor atom partially compensated by a charged dangling bond. The total energies of various dopant and dopant/bonding combinations are calculated for tetrahedral amorphous carbon. It is found that charged dangling bonds are less favoured because of the stronger Coulombic repulsion in ta-C. Instead the dopants can be compensated by weak bond states in the lower gap associated with odd-membered π-rings or odd-numbered π-chains. The effect is that the doping efficiency is low but there are not charged midgap recombination centres, to reduce photoconductivity or photoluminescence with doping, as occurs in a-Si:H.