Impact of Nitrogen, Boron and Phosphorus Impurities on the Electronic Structure of Diamond Probed by X-ray Spectroscopies

Abstract

Doping diamond with boron, nitrogen or phosphorus enables a fine tuning of its electronic properties, which is particularly relevant for applications involving electron emission. However, the chemical nature of the doping sites and its correlation with electron emission properties remain to be clarified. In this work, we applied soft X-ray spectroscopy techniques to probe occupied and unoccupied electronic states in undoped, boron-, phosphorus- and nitrogen-containing single crystal diamonds. X-ray absorption, X-ray emission and X-ray photoemission spectroscopies, performed at the carbon K-edge, provide a full picture of new electronic states created by impurities in diamond. The different probing depths of fluorescence- and electron-based detection techniques enable a comparison between surface and bulk contributions.