Impurity-to-band activation energy in phosphorus doped diamond

The value of the impurity-to-band activation energy EA of a dopant is a basic feature of the electrical conductivity of semiconductors. Various techniques were used to determine EA in n-type diamond doped with phosphorus, giving values of EA varying from 0.43 eV to 0.63 eV, the value EA of 0.6 eV being commonly accepted for the ionization energy of phosphorus donors in diamond. Nevertheless, up to now, the dispersion of the experimental values of EA remains unexplained. In this work, we investigate the electrical properties of a set of n-type diamond homoepitaxial films with different phosphorus concentrations by Hall effect measurements in order to deduce EA and to understand the evolution of this energy with the dopant concentration. We show that, below 2 × 1019 cm−3 phosphorus, the decrease of EA is mainly controlled by the concentration of ionized defects resulting from the donor compensation. The role of ionized defects in the decrease of EA is analyzed on the basis of existing models adapted to the case of diamond. The proposed model provides a correct description of the experimental data. It can be used to quantitatively predict the activation energy of phosphorus in n-type diamond for given donor and compensating acceptor concentrations.