Suppression and compensation effect of oxygen on the behavior of heavily boron-doped diamond films

This work investigates the suppression and compensation effect of oxygen on the behaviors and characteristics of heavily boron-doped microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition(MPCVD)diamond films.The suppression effect of oxygen on boron incorporation is observed by an improvement in crystal quality when oxygen is added during the diamond doping process.A relatively low hole concentration is expected and verified by Hall effect measurements due to the compensation effect of oxygen as a deep donor in diamond.A low acceptor concentration,high compensation donor concentration and relatively larger acceptor ionization energy are then induced by the incorporation of oxygen;however,a heavily boron-doped diamond film with high crystal quality can also be expected.The formation of an oxygen–boron complex structure instead of oxygen substitution,as indicated by the results of x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy,is suggested to be more responsible for the observed enhanced compensation effect due to its predicted low formation energy.Meanwhile,density functional theory calculations show that the boron–oxygen complex structure is easily formed in diamond with a formation energy of-0.83 eV.This work provides a comprehensive understanding of oxygen compensation in heavily boron-doped diamond.

Effects of oxygen/nitrogen co-incorporation on regulation of growth and properties of boron-doped diamond films

Regulation with nitrogen and oxygen co-doping on growth and properties of boron doped diamond films is studied by using laughing gas as dopant. As the concentration of laughing gas(N2O/C) increases from 0 to 10%, the growth rate of diamond film decreases gradually, and the nitrogen-vacancy(NV) center luminescence intensity increases first and then weakens. The results show that oxygen in laughing gas has a strong inhibitory effect on formation of NV centers, and the inhibitory effect would be stronger as the concentration of laughing gas increases. As a result, the film growth rate and nitrogen-related compensation donor decrease, beneficial to increase the acceptor concentration(~3.2×10^(19)cm^(-3)) in the film. Moreover, it is found that the optimal regulation with the quality and electrical properties of boron doped diamond films could be realized by adding appropriate laughing gas, especially the hole mobility(~700cm^(2)/V·s), which is beneficial to the realization of high-quality boron doped diamond films and high-level optoelectronic device applications in the future.

Effect of oxygen on regulation of properties of moderately boron-doped diamond films

Regulation of oxygen on properties of moderately boron-doped diamond films is fully investigated.Results show that,with adding a small amount of oxygen(oxygen-to-carbon ratio<5.0%),the crystal quality of diamond is improved,and a suppression effect of residual nitrogen is observed.With increasing ratio of O/C from 2.5%to 20.0%,the hole concentration is firstly increased then reduced.This change of hole concentration is also explained.Moreover,the results of Hall effect measurement with temperatures from 300 K to 825 K show that,with adding a small amount of oxygen,boron and oxygen complex structures(especially B_(3)O and B_(4)O)are formed and exhibit as shallow donor in diamond,which results in increase of donor concentration.With further increase of ratio of O/C,the inhibitory behaviors of oxygen on boron leads to decrease of acceptor concentration(the optical emission spectroscopy has shown that it is decreased with ratio of O/C more than 10.0%).This work demonstrates that oxygen-doping induced increasement of the crystalline and surface quality could be restored by the co-doping with oxygen.The technique could achieve boron-doped diamond films with both high quality and acceptable hole concentration,which is applicable to electronic level of usage.

Origin,characteristics,and suppression of residual nitrogen in MPCVD diamond growth reactor

Unintentional nitrogen incorporation has been observed in a set of microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition(MPCVD)-grown samples.No abnormality has been detected on the apparatus especially the base pressure and feeding gas purity.By a comprehensive investigation including the analysis of the plasma composition,we found that a minor leakage of the system could be significantly magnified by the thermal effect,resulting in a considerable residual nitrogen in the diamond material.Moreover,the doping mechanism of leaked air is different to pure nitrogen doping.The dosage of several ppm of pure nitrogen can lead to efficient nitrogen incorporation in diamond,while at least thousands ppm of leaked air is required for detecting obvious residual nitrogen.The difference of the dosage has been ascribed to the suppression effect of oxygen that consumes nitrogen.As the unintentional impurity is basically detrimental to the controllable fabrication of diamond for electronic application,we have provided an effective way to suppress the residual nitrogen in a slightly leaked system by modifying the susceptor geometry.This study indicates that even if a normal base pressure can be reached,the nitrogen residing in the chamber can be“activated”by the thermal effect and thus be incorporated in diamond material grown by a MPCVD reactor.