SiC layers were synthesized by high-dose carbon implantation into silicon. Their electron field emission properties were studied and correlated with results from atomic force microscopy (AFM) and conducting AFM measurements. It is clearly demonstrated that there are two types of field enhancement mechanisms responsible for the improvement of the electron field emission properties of these ion beam synthesized SiC layers. In the as-implanted samples, the local field enhancement effect is attributed to electrical inhomogeneity due to the existence of small conducting graphitic clusters embedded in the layer. On the other hand, in the annealed samples, the dominant field enhancement mechanism is attributed to a surface morphology effect due to the formation of small protrusion structures at the surface.
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Tsang et al. (2002) studied this question.