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The excellent material properties of diamond make it highly desirable for many extreme electronic applications that are out of reach of conventional electronic materials. For commercial diamond devices to become a reality, it is necessary to have an effective surface passivation since the passivation determines the ability of the device to withstand high surface electric fields. In this paper we present data from lateral Time-of-Flight studies on SiO2-passivated intrinsic single-crystalline CVD diamond. The SiO2 films were deposited using three different techniques. The influence of the passivation on hole transport was studied, which resulted in the increase of hole mobilities. The results from the three different passivations are compared. (C) 2014 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.

The recent progress in the growth of high-quality single-crystalline diamond films has sparked interest in the realization of efficient diamond power electronic devices. However, finding a suitable passivation is essential to improve the reliability and electrical performance of devices. In the current work, high-k dielectric materials such as aluminum oxide and hafnium oxide were deposited by atomic layer deposition on intrinsic diamond as a surface passivation layer. The hole transport properties in the diamond films were evaluated and compared to unpassivated films using the lateral time-of-flight technique. An enhancement of the near surface hole mobility in diamond films of up to 27% is observed when using aluminum oxide passivation.

Hole transport properties of boron-doped single-crystalline (SC) CVD diamond, growth in the<100> crystallographic direction, has been investigated. The measurement was carried out in thetemperature range 10  T  80 K. A Time-of-Flight (ToF) measurement, using a 213 nm, pulsedultraviolet laser for excitation was performed on high-purity SC diamonds to study hole driftmobility in the low-injection regime and the scattering mechanisms involved in the process. Asaturation of the hole mobility was observed. This indicates that impurity scattering is thedominating scattering process at these low temperatures.

Standard electronic devices encode bits of information by controlling the amount of electric charge in the circuits. Alternatively, it is possible to make devices that rely on other properties of electrons than their charge. For example, spintronic devices make use of the electron spin angular momentum as a carrier of information. A new concept is valleytronics in which information is encoded by the valley quantum number of the electron. The analogy between the valley and spin degrees of freedom also implies the possibility of valley-based quantum computing. In this Article, we demonstrate for the first time generation, transport ( across macroscopic distances) and detection of valley-polarized electrons in bulk diamond with a relaxation time of 300 ns at 77 K. We anticipate that these results will form the basis for the development of integrated valleytronic devices.

The stability of valley polarized electron states is crucial for the development of valleytronics. A long relaxation time of the valley polarization is required to enable operations to be performed on the polarized states. Here, we investigate the stability of valley polarized states in diamond, expressed as relaxation time. We have found that the stability of the states can be extremely long when we consider the electron-phonon scattering processes allowed by symmetry considerations. We determine electron-phonon coupling constants by Time-of-Flight measurements and Monte Carlo simulations and use these data to map out the relaxation time temperature dependency. The relaxation time for diamond can be microseconds or longer below 100 K and 100 V/cm due to the strong covalent bond, which is highly encouraging for future use in valleytronic applications. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.