Atomic interactions at the (100) diamond surface and the impact of surface and interface changes on the electronic transport properties

Abstract

Centuries and centuries already, diamond is a material that speaks to ones imagination. Till the 18th century it wa only mined in India, after it was also found in Brazil and South-Africa. But along the fascinating properties of diamond, it is also a very interesting material for industry. After the discovery at the end of the 18th century that diamond consists of carbon, it took until the 50's of the previous century before research groups from Russia, Japan and the USA were able to reproduce the growth process of diamond. In 1989 it was discovered that the surface of intrinsic, insulation diamond can be made conductive by hydrogenating the surface. It was clear that not only hydrogen at the surface but also the so-called 'absorbates' were responsible for this conductivity. It was still not completely clear what was the influence of other species (like oxygen) on the mechanism of surface conductivity and therefore in this thesis the influence of oxygen on the electronic transport properties of atomically flat diamond are researched. Besides the growth of atomically flat diamond with the use of CVD (chemical vapour deposition) en the study of the grown surfaces with characterising techniques such as AFM (atomic force microscopy) and STM (scanning tunnelling microscopy), the study of the surface treatment with plasma techniques is the main topic of this thesis. The influence of oxygen on the surface conductivity is studied and with the ToF(Time-of-Flight) technique the transport properties of the freestanding diamond are examined. With a short laserflash, electrons and holes are created at the diamond/ aluminium interface and due to an electric field (up to 500V) the charge carriers are translated to the back contact. In this way the influence of the surface and the changes at the aluminium contacts is studied leading to very interesting results.