Origin of band-A emission in diamond thin films

Takeuchi D.

Watanabe H.

Yamanaka Shoji

Okushi H.

Sawada H.

Ichinose H.

Sekiguchi T.

Kajimura K.

Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics

By means of scanning cathodoluminescence (CL) measurements, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), we have studied the origin of the band-A emission in homoepitaxial diamond thin films grown using microwave-plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD). A broad luminescence peak at around 2.9 eV, the band-A emission, was observed in homoepitaxial diamond films with nonepitaxial crystallites (NC's), but not in the high-quality films without NC's. The scanning CL measurements showed that the band-A emission appeared only at NC sites. TEM revealed that the NC's contained defects such as dislocations and several types of grain boundary (GB). Further, HRTEM indicated that several types of incoherent GB existed within the NC's including five-, six-, and seven-member carbon atom rings. These were the same GB's as those in polycrystalline CVD diamond films that had sp2-like structure of carbon atoms as indicated by the observation of the 1s-π signal in EELS. It is then reasonable to consider that, if sp2-like structures behave as defects in the network of sp3 structure of diamond, one possible origin of band-A emission might be the sp2 defects in the GB's and dislocations. The band-A emission behavior in homoepitaxial CVD diamond films is the same as that in polycrystalline diamond films. The origin of the band-A emission generally observed in many kinds of CVD diamond is discussed relative to these results.

Physics [ 420 ]

eng

American Physical Society

Copyright (c) 2001 American Physical Society

[NCID] AA11187113

[ISSN] 1098-0121

[DOI] 10.1103/PhysRevB.63.245328

[DOI] http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.63.245328