Doping of diamond crystals with a dopant of P3N5

In this paper, a new dopant of P3N5 (phosphorus nitride) was doped into the diamond growth cell to grow diamond crystals by temperature gradient growth method (TGM) under high pressure and high temperature (HPHT). The experiments were performed at a fixed pressure of about 6.0 GPa and temperatures of 1600-1650 K. The gained diamond crystals were characterized by infrared (IR) absorption spectroscopy, micro-Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. IR measurements demonstrated that, nitrogen atom was indeed doped into diamond crystals, and the diamond crystals with perfect shape containing nitrogen concentration ranging from 461 atomic parts per million (ppm) to 2186 atomic ppm were successfully synthesized. Nitrogen atoms present in diamond crystal were predominantly in isolated form accompanied by a small amount of nitrogen pairs. Micro-Raman spectra implied that crystalline quality deteriorated with nitrogen concentration gradually increased in diamond-growing environment. The XPS spectra revealed that only a few of phosphorus impurities about tens of ppm level were incorporated into a diamond crystal which was heavily doped with P3N5. This study will promote the application of doping diamonds in micro-electronics field and other fields.