Summary: Sulfur: a potential donor in diamond
D. Saada 1;2 , Joan Adler 1 and R. Kalish 1;2
1 Department of Physics and 2 Solid State Institute, Technion­IIT, Haifa 32000, Israel.
(June 20, 2000)
Abstract
We performed first­principle calculations of substitutional sulfur in diamond,
in the neutral (S 0 ) and charged states. The energy levels induced by sulfur
in diamond are calculated to be 0.15 eV and 0.5 eV from the bottom of
the conduction band, for S 0 and the singly ionized state S + , respectively.
The formation energy for the neutral state of sulfur is found to be 7.2 eV,
lower than that of phosphorus in diamond. The most likely state of sulfur
in diamond is found to be the doubly ionized state S ++ , which cannot act
as a donor. However, a small fraction of sulfur can be found in the singly
ionized state S + , which can donate an electron for conduction at reasonable
temperatures.
The utilization of many of the outstanding electronic properties of diamond is hampered
by the lack of electronic­grade n­type diamond. Hence, much theoretical and experimental
work has been devoted to the search of a suitable donor in diamond, however, so far, with
only limited success. Till most recently only phosphorus was unambiguously proven to have
a donor level in diamond 1;2 . Unfortunately, the electron mobilities (¯) obtainable are rather

Source: Adler, Joan - Physics Department, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology

Collections: Physics