Surface conductivity of nitrogen-doped diamond

Synthetic type Ib diamond crystals with (001) surfaces that expose growth sectors of different nitrogen content have been used to study the phenomenon of p-type surface conductivity upon plasma hydrogenation and upon overgrowth with thin epitaxial CVD diamond layers. We found that an unbiased microwave-driven hydrogen plasma leads to surface conductivity only on well-defined regions on the substrates that correlate with growth sectors of low nitrogen content; whereas no conductive layer is found on top of growth sectors with higher nitrogen concentrations in the range of 200 ppm. After growing a homoepitaxial intrinsic diamond layer of only 20 nm on top of the nitrogen doped diamond, these differences are no longer observed and surface conductivity is established homogeneously over the whole sample. The same effect can be achieved by exposing the Ib substrates to a pure hydrogen plasma provided the sample is biased with an additional DC voltage of −250 V. Both results can be understood in the framework of the surface transfer doping model suggested earlier by Maier and colleagues when the compensation of nitrogen donors by surface acceptors and their passivation by hydrogen is taken into account. The quantitative discussion shows that the doping capability of the surface acceptors is exhausted at lateral concentrations of approximately 1×10¹³ cm⁻², which also corresponds to the maximum hole concentration usually observed in hydrogen-induced p-type conductive layers.