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Chemical Analysis of Impurity Boron Atoms in Diamond Using Soft X-ray Emission Spectroscopy (open access)

Chemical Analysis of Impurity Boron Atoms in Diamond Using Soft X-ray Emission Spectroscopy

To analyze the local structure and/or chemical states of boron atoms in boron-doped diamond, which can be synthesized by the microwave plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition method (CVD-B-diamond) and the temperature gradient method at high pressure and high temperature (HPT-B-diamond), we measured the soft X-ray emission spectra in the CK and BK regions of B-diamonds using synchrotron radiation at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). X-ray spectral analyses using the fingerprint method and molecular orbital calculations confirm that boron atoms in CVD-B-diamond substitute for carbon atoms in the diamond lattice to form covalent B-C bonds, while boron atoms in HPT-B-diamond react with the impurity nitrogen atoms to form hexagonal boron nitride. This suggests that the high purity diamond without nitrogen impurities is necessary to synthesize p-type B-diamond semiconductors.
Date: March 29, 2008
Creator: Muramatsu, Yasuji; Iihara, Junji; Takebe, Toshihiko & Denlinger, Jonathan D.
System: The UNT Digital Library