The p-to-n-type conversion of boron-doped diamond layers by deuteration: New findings

The p-to-n-type conversion of particular B-doped homoepitaxially grown diamond layers upon deuterium plasma treatment was discovered three years ago. However, many questions regarding the reproducibility of the effect for samples of different origins remain unanswered up to now, in particular the role of the electrical contacts and the possibility of a surface inversion layer being responsible for the n-type conductivity, the thermal stability and origin of the donor.Here we address the above questions. We show that the p-to-n conversion is closely related to the presence of defects, which can vary, on a macroscopic scale, in different regions of the same sample. The p-type regions containing a small concentration of defects are found to be converted to n-type upon deuteration. In contrast, the regions counting a high defect density exhibit very low p-type conductivity related to passivation of the boron acceptors by deuterium accompanied by a large uptake of D on defects. We show that the n-type conversion can be equally observed with three different kinds of contacts (silver paint, implanted and evaporated). We prove that the n-type conversion is a bulk effect and not a surface effect. We find that the thermal stability of the n-type complex is limited to temperatures lower than 200 °C. The temperature dependence of the carrier concentration measured by the Hall effect at different stages of the conversion process is fitted following the formalism describing the conduction mechanisms in a partially compensated semiconductor. The fact that the donor concentration in the as-deuterated state is very close to the boron concentration strongly suggests that the new-formed donor complexes contain both D and B.