Effects of hydrogen atoms on surface conductivity of diamond film

Abstract

To investigate the effects of surface chemisorbed hydrogen atoms and hydrogen atoms in the subsurface region of diamond on surface conductivity, models of hydrogen atoms chemisorbed on diamond with (100) orientation and various concentrations of hydrogen atoms in the subsurface layer of the diamond were built. By using the first-principles method based on density functional theory, the equilibrium geometries and densities of states of the models were studied. The results showed that the surface chemisorbed hydrogen alone could not induce high surface conductivity. In addition, isolated hydrogen atoms in the subsurface layer of the diamond prefer to exist at the bond centre site of the C-C bond. However, such a structure would induce deep localized states, which could not improve the surface conductivity. When the hydrogen concentration increases, the C-H-C-H structure and C-3Hbc-C structure in the subsurface region are more stable than other configurations. The former is not beneficial to the increase of the surface conductivity. However, the latter would induce strong surface states near the Fermi level, which would give rise to high surface conductivity. Thus, a high concentration of subsurface hydrogen atoms in diamond would make significant contributions to surface conductivity.