The preparation and electrical properties of diamond nanocones are reviewed, including a maskless etching process and mechanism of large-area diamond conical nanostructure arrays using a hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) system with negatively biased substrates, and the field electron emission, gas sensing, and quantum transport properties of a diamond nanocone array or an individual diamond nanocone. Optimal cone aspect ratio and array density are investigated, along with the relationships between the cone morphologies and experimental parameters, such as the CH4/H2 ratio of the etching gas, the bias current, and the gas pressure. The reviewed experiments demonstrate the possibility of using nanostructured diamond cones as a display device element, a point electron emission source, a gas sensor or a quantum device.
The adsorption behaviors of glycine on diamond(001) are systematically investigated by first-principles calculations.We have considered all possible adsorption configurations without a surface dangling bond and give a quantitative analysis for the relationship between the deviation of carbon bond angle and adsorption energy. We found that a smaller distortion of carbon covalent bond angle results in a more stable adsorption structure, and the most stable adsorption has a benzene-ringlike structure with the highest adsorption energy of 5.11 e V per molecule and the minimum distortion of carbon covalent bond angle.
