Excitation and temperature dependent exciton-carrier transport in CVD diamond: Diffusion coefficient, recombination lifetime and diffusion length

Time-resolved induced absorption (IA) and light induced transient grating (LITG) techniques were applied for the investigation of nonequilibrium exciton-carrier diffusion and recombination processes in a high-purity CVD diamond. Injection range from 1015 to 1020 cm−3 carrier density was achieved by combining one photon and two photon excitations. The measurements were performed in the 10-750 K temperature range. The LITG diffusion coefficient peaked at 44 cm2/s value at room temperature under low injection conditions. At lower temperatures it transferred to much lower exciton diffusion coefficient. A strong decrease of diffusion coefficient under higher injection conditions was explained by exciton formation with a low diffusion coefficient and many body effects, as polyexciton and electron-hole droplet formation. High temperature phonon-limited diffusion coefficient was weakly injection dependent. Low excitation carrier lifetime was about 700 ns above 200 K. At lower temperatures, the decay time reduced by two orders of magnitude, which was explained by the formation of biexcitons. At lowest temperatures, an increase of the carrier recombination rate at high injection was attributed to Auger recombinations of polyexcitons and electron-hole droplets. While at high temperatures, the increase of the recombination rate with 490 meV activation energy was observed. The combination of IA and LITG measurements provided effective diffusion lengths in a 0.3-50 µm range, being strongly dependent on the excess carrier density and temperature.