Nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) has been grown using a nanodiamond seeding technique, leading to a dense form of this material, with grain sizes around 100 nm. The electrical properties of both intrinsic and lightly boron-doped NCD have been investigated using impedance spectroscopy and Hall effect measurements. For intrinsic material, both grain boundaries and grains themselves initially contribute to the frequency dependant impedance values recorded. However, boundary conduction can be removed and the films become highly resistive. Interestingly, the ac properties of these films are also excellent with a dielectric loss value ∼0.004 for frequencies up to 10 MHz. The dielectric properties of these NCD films are therefore as good as high quality large grain polycrystalline diamond films. In the case of boron-doped material, p-type material with good carrier mobility values (10–50 cm2/V s) can be produced at carrier concentrations around 1017 cm−3.

The use of diamond as a semiconductor for the realization of transistor structures, which can operate at high temperatures (>700 K), is of increasing interest. In terms of bipolar devices, the growth of n-type phosphorus doped diamond is more efficient on the (111) growth plane; p-type boron-doped diamond growth has been most usually grown in the (100) direction and, hence, this study into the electronic properties, at high temperatures, of boron-doped diamond (111) homoepitaxial layers. It is shown that highly doped layers (hole carrier concentrations as high as 2×1020 cm−3) can be produced without promoting the onset of (unwanted) hopping conduction. The persistence of valance-band conduction in these films enables relatively high mobility values to be measured (∼20 cm2/V s) and, intriguingly, these values are not significantly reduced at high temperatures. The layers also display very low compensation levels, a fact that may explain the high mobility values since compensation is required for hopping conduction. The results are discussed in terms of the potential of these types of layers for use with high temperature compatible diamond transistors.

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Impedance spectroscopy has been used to investigate conductivity within boron-doped diamond in an intrinsic/delta-doped/intrinsic (i-δ-i) multilayer structure. For a 5 nm thick delta layer, three conduction pathways are observed, which can be assigned to transport within the delta layer and to two differing conduction paths in the i-layers adjoining the delta layer. For transport in the i-layers, thermal trapping/detrapping processes can be observed, and only at the highest temperature investigated (673 K) can transport due to a single conduction process be seen. Impedance spectroscopy is an ideal nondestructive tool for investigating the electrical characteristics of complex diamond structures.