High fraction of substitutional phosphorus in a (100) diamond epilayer with low surface roughness

For high power electronics, diamond is a promising semiconductor with phosphorus being the current substitutional donor. However, up to now, in (100) oriented grown diamond, only a small fraction of phosphorus atoms is incorporated in substitutional sites (<30%) and the epilayer surface exhibits macrosteps. In this work, we present a (100) phosphorus-doped diamond epilayer where similar to 100% of the phosphorus atoms are incorporated in substitutional sites. The film exhibits a low surface roughness (RMS = 0.5 nm). Our epilayer is conductive (rho = 5.0 x 10(6) Omega . cm at 300 K) and neutral phosphorus are detected in infrared absorption. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4712617]