Hopping conduction of non metallic heavily doped delta-layers in CVD diamond

It is shown that the experimental temperature dependence of the sheet resistance of non metallic (just below the insulator-metal phase transition) heavily boron doped delta-layers in chemically vapor deposited (CVD) diamond in a wide temperature range from 30 to 450 K can be explained by hole nearest-neighbor hopping between localized states formed probably by clusters of many negatively charged boron ions. The electrostatic potentials of these states are likely of a short-range type, which can be explained by the screening effect due to holes in neighbor clusters. The suggested theoretical temperature dependence of the sheet resistance by the choice of only two fitting parameters can be well fit to the experimental one in the whole above mentioned temperature range.

Automated summary

The experimental temperature dependence of the sheet resistance of heavily boron doped delta-layers in chemically vapor deposited diamond can be explained by hole nearest-neighbor hopping between localized states formed probably by clusters of negatively charged boron ions. The suggested theoretical temperature dependence of the sheet resistance can be well fit to the experimental one by the choice of only two fitting parameters.