Electronic structure of boron doped diamond: An x-ray spectroscopic study

The valence and conduction band electronic structure of boron-doped diamond has been measured using soft x-ray emission and absorption spectroscopy. The experimental results reveal p-type doping in the diamond film through the appearance of states in the band-gap. Structure distortion was observed around the doping center, while the long range order of the diamond structure remains. A chemically shifted C 1s level explains why one of the absorption features seems to appear below the valence band maximum. An excitonic feature was observed in the boron-doped diamond, similar to that observed in pure diamond, indicating that the exciton binding energy remains the same upon B-doping