RT journal article
T1 Impact of methane concentration on surface morphology and boron incorporation of heavily boron-doped single crystal diamond layers
A1 Rouzbahani, Rozita
A1 Nicley, Shanon S
A1 Vanpoucke, Danny E P
A1 Lloret Vieira, Fernando Manuel
A1 Pobedinskas, Paulius
A1 Araújo Gay, Daniel
A1 Haenen, Ken
A2 Física Aplicada
A2 Ciencia de los Materiales e Ingeniería Metalúrgica y Química Inorgánica
K1 Impurity incorporation
K1 Methane concentration dependence
K1 DFT calculation
K1 CVD growth
K1 Boron-doped single crystal diamond
AB The methane concentration dependence of the plasma gas phase on surface morphology and boron incorporation in single crystal, boron-doped diamond deposition is experimentally and computationally investigated. Starting at 1%, an increase of the methane concentration results in an observable increase of the B-doping level up to 1.7×1021 cm−3, while the hole Hall carrier mobility decreases to 0.7±0.2 cm2 V−1 s−1. For B-doped SCD films grown at 1%, 2%, and 3% [CH4]/[H2], the electrical conductivity and mobility show no temperature-dependent behavior due to the metallic-like conduction mechanism occurring beyond the Mott transition. First principles calculations are used to investigate the origin of the increased boron incorporation. While the increased formation of growth centers directly related to the methane concentration does not significantly change the adsorption energy of boron at nearby sites, they dramatically increase the formation of missing H defects acting as preferential boron incorporation sites, indirectly increasing the boron incorporation. This not only indicates that the optimized methane concentration possesses a large potential for controlling the boron concentration levels in the diamond, but also enables optimization of the growth morphology. The calculations provide a route to understand impurity incorporation in diamond on a general level, of great importance for color center formation.
SN 0008-6223
YR 2021
FD 2021
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/30526
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/30526
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 13-nov-2026