We report a study of the relaxation time of the restoration of the resistive superconducting state in single crystalline boron-doped diamond using amplitude-modulated absorption of (sub-)THz radiation (AMAR). The films grown on an insulating diamond substrate have a low carrier density of about 2.5x10^{21} cm^{-3} and a critical temperature of about 2 K. By changing the modulation frequency we find a high-frequency rolloff which we associate with the characterstic time of energy relaxation between the electron and the phonon systems or the relaxation time for nonequilibrium superconductivity. Our main result is that the electron-phonon scattering time varies clearly as T^{-2}, over the accessible temperature range of 1.7 to 2.2 K. In addition, we find, upon approaching the critical temperature T_c, evidence for an increasing relaxation time on both sides of T_c.
Boron-doped diamond granular thin films are known to exhibit superconductivity with an optimal critical temperature of Tc = 7.2K. Here we report the measured complex surface impedance of Boron-doped diamond films in the microwave frequency range using a resonant technique. Experimentally measured inductance values are in good agreement with estimates obtained from the normal state sheet resistance of the material. The magnetic penetration depth temperature dependence is consistent with that of a fully-gapped s-wave superconductor. Boron-doped diamond films should find application where high ki…
The electronic structure, lattice dynamics, and electron-phonon coupling of the boron-doped diamond are investigated using the density functional supercell method. Our results indicate the boron-doped diamond is a phonon mediated superconductor, con rming previous theoretical conclusions deduced from the calculations employing the virtual crystal approximation. We show that the optical phonon modes involving B vibrations play an important role in the electron-phonon coupling. Di erent from previous theoretical results, our calculated electron-phonon coupling constant is 0.39 and the estimated …
We report optical reflectivity study on pure and boron-doped diamond films grown by a hot-filament chemical vapor deposition method. The study reveals the formation of an impurity band close to the top of the valence band upon boron-doping. A schematic picture for the evolution of the electronic structure with boron doping was drawn based on the experimental observation. The study also reveals that the boron doping induces local lattice distortion, which brings an infrared-forbidden phonon mode at 1330 cm$^{-1}$ activated in doped sample. The antiresonance characteristic of the mode in conduct…
Diamond has outstanding physical properties: the hardest known material, a wide band gap, the highest thermal conductivity, and a very high Debye temperature. In 2004, Ekimov et al. discovered that heavily boron-doped (B-doped) diamond becomes a superconductor around 4 K. Our group successfully controlled the boron concentration and synthesized homoepitaxially grown superconducting diamond films by a CVD method. By CVD method, we found that superconductivity appears when the boron concentration (nB) exceeds a metal-insulator transition concentration of 3.0x10^20 cm^-3 and its Tczero increases …
Superconductivity of boron-doped diamond, reported recently at T_c=4 K, is investigated exploiting its electronic and vibrational analogies to MgB2. The deformation potential of the hole states arising from the C-C bond stretch mode is 60% larger than the corresponding quantity in MgB2 that drives its high Tc, leading to very large electron-phonon matrix elements. The calculated coupling strength λ~ 0.5 leads to T_c in the 5-10 K range and makes phonon coupling the likely mechanism. Higher doping should increase T_c somewhat, but effects of three dimensionality primarily on the density of stat…
X-ray absorption (XAS) and emission (XES) spectroscopy near B-K and C-K edges have been performed on metallic (~1at%B, B-diamond) and semiconducting (~0.1at%B and N, BN-diamond) doped-diamond films. Both B-K XAS and XES spectra shows metallic partial density of state (PDOS) with the Fermi energy of 185.3 eV, and there is no apparent boron-concentration dependence in contrast to the different electric property. In C-K XAS spectrum of B-diamond, the impurity state ascribed to boron is clearly observed near the Fermi level. The Fermi energy is found to be almost same with the top of the valence b…
A novel diamond anvil cell suitable for electrical transport measurements under high pressure has been developed. A boron-doped metallic diamond film was deposited as an electrode onto a nano-polycrystalline diamond anvil using a microwave plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition technique combined with electron beam lithography. The electrical transport measurements of Pb were performed up to 8 GPa, and the maximum pressure reached was above 30 GPa. The boron-doped metallic diamond electrodes showed no signs of degradation after repeated compression measurements.
We report on the transport properties of nanostructures made from boron-doped superconducting diamond. Starting from nanocrystalline superconducting boron-doped diamond thin films, grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition, we pattern by electron-beam lithography devices with dimensions in the nanometer range. We show that even for such small devices, the superconducting properties of the material are well preserved: for wires of width less than $100\, nm$, we measure critical temperatures in the Kelvin range and critical field in the Tesla range.
We study how attractive boron correlations in boron-doped diamond affect the superconducting critical temperature. The critical temperature is obtained from the McMillan formula for strong coupling superconductors with the density of states evaluated in the dynamical cluster approximation. Numerical results for the cluster of $2\times 2\times 2$ atoms show that attractive correlations lower the density of states at the Fermi level. We argue that this might explain experimentally observed differences in critical temperatures of 100 and 111 oriented films.
The superconductivity transition temperatures Tc(onset) of 11.4 K and Tc(offset) of 7.4 K, which are the highest in diamond at present, are realized on homoepitaxially grown (111) diamond films with a high boron doping concentration of 8.4E21 cm-3 (4.7 atomic percent). Tc values of (111) diamond films are more than twice as high as those of (100) films at the equivalent boron concentration. The Tc of boron-doped (111) diamond increases as the boron content increases up to the maximum incorporated concentration and is agrees with the value estimated using McMillan's equation. The advantageous T…
Diamond anvil cell using boron-doped metallic diamond electrodes covered with undoped diamond insulating layer have been developed for electrical transport measurements under high pressure. These designed diamonds were grown on a bottom diamond anvil via a nanofabrication process combining microwave plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition and electron beam lithography. The resistance measurements of high quality FeSe superconducting single crystal under high pressure were successfully demonstrated by just putting the sample and gasket on the bottom diamond anvil directly. The superconducting…
In this work we have demonstrated the growth of nanocrystalline diamond on boron nitride ceramic. We measured the zeta potential of the ceramics to select the diamond seeds. Diamond was then grown on the seeded ceramics using a microwave chemical vapour deposition system. A clear difference was found between the samples which were seeded with nanodiamond and the ones not seeded before growth. Raman spectroscopy confirmed the excellent quality of the diamond film. Dielectric measurements showed an increase in the dielectric constant of the material after diamond growth. The diamond was also dop…
Anomalous resistive peaks below the superconducting transition temperature in heavily boron doped nanocrystalline diamond films could have potential application in switching devices, however the exact origin is still under study. We establish a temperature dependence of this resistive phase similar to what has been reported for in Josephson junction arrays and other granular superconductors where the charge duel of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition has been observed. Non-linear magnetoresistance with a temperature dependent peak feature below the critical field are also pres…
We study the concentration dependence of the superconducting critical temperature Tc in a boron-doped diamond. We evaluate the density of states at Fermi level within the dynamical cluster approximation obtaining higher values than from the coherent potential approximation. We discuss the Tc as a function of density of states within the BCS, the McMillan, and the Belitz theory. The simplified Belitz theory gives the best agreement with experimental data. Since the density of states follows a simple power-law for accessible doping concetrations, the present theory offers an analytical formula f…
Sulfur-doped SnSe single crystal was successfully synthesized using a melt and slow-cooling method. The chemical composition and valence state of the obtained sample were analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The pressure range of a diamond anvil cell with boron-doped diamond electrodes was upgraded to 104 GPa using nano-polycrystalline diamond anvil to investigate a pressure effect for the sample. Electrical resistivity measurements of sulfur-doped SnSe single crystal showed the insulator-metal-superconductor transition by applying high pressure up to 75.9 GPa.
Comparison of periodic B dopants with a random alloy of substitional boron in diamond is carried out using several supercells and the coherent potential approximation (CPA) for the random alloy case. The main peak in the B local density of states is shifted to lower binding energy compared to the corresponding C peak in intrinsic diamond. In supercells, this shows up as strongly B-character bands split from bulk C bands away from the zone center,in an energy region around -1 eV. Even for a 4*4*4 supercell (BC$_{127}$), effects of the dopant order are evident in the form of primarily B-characte…
Temperature and pressure are essential parameters in the synthesis, evaluation, and application of functional materials. This study proposes the addition of a heating function to a high-pressure diamond anvil cell (DAC) with in-situ measurement probes. The proposed DAC allows for simultaneous control of temperature and pressure within the sample space and can be used to synthesize functional materials under extreme conditions. The various components, namely the heater, thermometer, and measurement probes, were fabricated with a boron-doped diamond epitaxial film and could be used repeatedly. T…
Scanning tunneling spectroscopies are performed below 100~mK on nano-crystalline boron-doped diamond films characterized by Transmission Electron Microscopy and transport measurements. We demonstrate a strong correlation between the local superconductivity strength and the granular structure of the films. The study of the spectral shape, amplitude and temperature dependence of the superconductivity gap enables us to differentiate intrinsically superconducting grains that follow the BCS model, from grains showing a different behavior involving the superconducting proximity effect.
High-pressure techniques open exploration of functional materials in broad research fields. An established diamond anvil cell with a boron-doped diamond heater and transport measurement terminals has performed the high-pressure synthesis of a cubic Sn$_{3}$S$_{4}$ superconductor. X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy reveal that the Sn$_{3}$S$_{4}$ phase is stable in the pressure range of P>5 GPa in a decompression process. Transport measurement terminals in the diamond anvil cell detect a metallic nature and superconductivity in the synthesized Sn$_{3}$S$_{4}$ with a maximum onset transiti…
We report the discovery of superconductivity in boron-doped diamond synthesized at high pressure (8-9 GPa) and temperature (2,500-2,800 K). Electrical resistivity, magnetic susceptibility, specific heat, and field-dependent resistance measurements show that boron-doped diamond is a bulk, type-II superconductor below the superconducting transition temperature Tc=4 K; superconductivity survives in a magnetic field up to Hc2(0)=3.5 T. The discovery of superconductivity in diamond-structured carbon suggests that Si and Ge, which also form in the diamond structure, may similarly exhibit superconduc…
A diamond anvil cell (DAC) which can generate extremely high pressure of multi-megabar is promising tool to develop a further physics such a high-transition temperature superconductivity. However, electrical transport measurements, which is one of the most important properties of such functional materials, using the DAC is quite difficult because the sample space is very small and a deformation of electrodes under extreme condition. In this study, we fabricated a boron-doped diamond micro-electrode and an undoped diamond insulation on a beveled culet surface of the diamond anvil. By using the …
We present the first scanning tunneling spectroscopy study of single-crystalline boron doped diamond. The measurements were performed below 100 mK with a low temperature scanning tunneling microscope. The tunneling density of states displays a clear superconducting gap. The temperature evolution of the order parameter follows the weak coupling BCS law with $Δ(0)/k_B T_c \simeq 1.74$. Vortex imaging at low magnetic field also reveals localized states inside the vortex core that are unexpected for such a dirty superconductor.
Diamond is a material that offers potential in numerous device applications. In particular, highly boron doped diamond is attractive due to its superconductivity and high Young's Modulus. The fabrication of stable, low resistance, ohmic contacts is essential to ensure proper device function. Previous work has established the efficacy of several methods of forming suitable contacts to diamond at room temperature and above, including carbide forming and carbon soluble metallisation schemes. Herein, the stability of several contact schemes (Ti, Cr, Mo, Ta and Pd) to highly boron doped nanocrystal…
We consider superconductivity in boron (B) doped diamond using a simplified model for the valence band of diamond. We treat the effects of substitutional disorder of B ions by the coherent potential approximation (CPA) and those of the attractive force between holes by the ladder approximation under the assumption of instantaneous interaction with the Debye cutoff. We thereby calculate the quasiparticle life time, the evolution of the single-particle spectra due to doping, and the effect of disorder on the superconducting critical temperature $T_c$. We in particular compare our results with th…
Possibility for collectivization of acceptor states in a semiconductor, converting it to metal, is discussed within the scope of Anderson s-d hybride model. This model is generalized for multicomponent band structure and composite acceptor states, localized on pairs of neighbor dopants (impurity "dumbbells"), in order to describe boron doped diamond CB$_x$. The resulting parameters of band structure, in particular, position of the Fermi level, are compared to the recent experimental data on metallized and superconducting CB$_x$.
Carbon- and boron-2$p$ states of superconducting and non-superconducting boron-doped diamond samples are measured using soft X-ray emission and absorption spectroscopy. For the superconducting sample, a large density of hole states is observed in the valence band in addition to the states in the impurity band. The hole states in the valence band is located at about 1.3 eV below the valence band maximum regardless of the doping level, which cannot be interpreted within a simple rigid band model. Present experimental results, combined with the first principles calculations, suggest that supercon…
The occurrence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition is investigated in heavily boron-doped nanocrystalline diamond films through a combination of current-voltage and resistance measurements. We observe a robust BKT transition in the nanocrystalline diamond films with smaller grain size along with transport features related to vortex pinning. The vortex core energy determined through analysis of the resistance temperature curves was found to be anti-correlated to the BKT transition temperatures. It is also observed that the higher BKT temperature is related to an increased vo…
Diamond, a wide band-gap semiconductor, can be engineered to exhibit superconductivity when doped heavily with boron. The phenomena has been demonstrated in samples grown by chemical vapour deposition where the boron concentration exceeds the critical concentration for the metal-to-insulator transition of $n_{MIT} \gtrsim 4\times10^{20}/\text{cm}^3$. While the threshold carrier concentration for superconductivity is generally well established in the literature, it is unclear how well correlated higher critical temperatures are with increased boron concentration. Previous studies have generally…
We have investigated the low energy electronic state of a boron-doped diamond thin film by the ultrahigh resolution laser-excited photoemission spectroscopy. We observed a clear shift of the leading edge below 11 K indicative of a superconducting gap opening ($Δ\sim 0.78$ meV at 4.5 K). The gap feature is significantly broad and the well-defined quasiparticle peak is not recognizable even at the lowest temperature of measurement 4.5 K. We discuss our result in terms of possible disorder effect on superconductivity in this system.
A phase slip is a localized disturbance in the coherence of a superconductor allowing an abrupt 2$π$ phase shift. Phase slips are a ubiquitous feature of one-dimensional superconductors and also have an analogue in two-dimensions. Here we present electrical transport measurements on boron-doped nanocrystalline diamond (BNCD) microbridges where, despite their three-dimensional macroscopic geometry, we find clear evidence of phase slippage in both the resistance-temperature and voltage-current characteristics. We attribute this behavior to the unusual microstructure of BNCD. We argue that the co…
We have investigated the superconductivity discovered in boron (B)-doped diamonds by means of 11B-NMR on heteroepitaxially grown (111) and (100) films. 11B-NMR spectra for all of the films are identified to arise from the substitutional B(1) site as single occupation and lower symmetric B(2) site substituted as boron+hydrogen(B+H) complex, respectively. A clear evidence is presented that the effective carriers introduced by B(1) substitution are responsible for the superconductivity, whereas the charge neutral B(2) sites does not offer the carriers effectively. The result is also corroborated …
Among the many remarkable properties of diamond, the ability to superconduct when heavily doped with boron has attracted much interest in the carbon community. When considering the nanocrystalline boron doped system, the reduced dimensionality and confinement effects have led to several intriguing observations most notably, signatures of a mixed superconducting phase. Here we present ultra-high-resolution transmission electron microscopy imaging of the grain boundary and demonstrate how the complex microstructure leads to enhanced carrier correlations. We observe hallmark features of spin-orbi…
This work investigates the high-pressure structure of freestanding superconducting ($T_{c}$ = 4.3\,K) boron doped diamond (BDD) and how it affects the electronic and vibrational properties using Raman spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction in the 0-30\,GPa range. High-pressure Raman scattering experiments revealed an abrupt change in the linear pressure coefficients and the grain boundary components undergo an irreversible phase change at 14\,GPa. We show that the blue shift in the pressure-dependent vibrational modes correlates with the negative pressure coefficient of $T_{c}$ in BDD. The analysi…
Superconductivity was discovered in heavily boron-doped diamond thin films deposited by the microwave plasma assisted chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) method. Advantages of the MPCVD deposited diamond are the controllability of boron concentration in a wide range, and a high boron concentration, especially in (111) oriented films, compared to that of the high-pressure high-temperature method. The superconducting transition temperatures are determined to be 8.7K for Tc onset and 5.0K for zero resistance by transport measurements. And the upper critical field is estimated to be around 7T.
Diamond has always been adored as a jewel. Even more fascinating is its outstanding physical properties; it is the hardest material known in the world with the highest thermal conductivity. Meanwhile, when we turn to its electrical properties, diamond is a rather featureless electrical insulator. However, with boron doping, it becomes a p-type semiconductor, with boron acting as a charge acceptor. Therefore the recent news of superconductivity in heavily boron-doped diamond synthesized by high pressure sintering was received with considerable surprise. Opening up new possibilities for diamond-…
We perform a detailed calculation of the various contributions to the fluctuation conductivity of a granular metal close to its superconducting transition. We find three distinct regions of power law behavior in reduced temperature, $η=(T-T_c)/T_c$, with crossovers at $Γ/T_c$ and $E_{Th}/T_c$, where $Γ$ is the electron tunneling rate, and $E_{Th}$ is the Thouless energy of a grain. The calculation includes both intergrain and intragrain degrees of freedom. This complete theory of the fluctuation region in granular superconductors is then compared to experimental results from boron-doped nanocr…
A superconducting boron doped nanocrystalline diamond (B-NCD) coplanar waveguide resonator (CPR) is presented for kinetic inductance ($L_k$) and penetration depth ($λ_{\rm{L}}$) measurements at microwave frequencies of 0.4 to 1.2 GHz and at temperatures below 3 K. Using a simplified effective medium CPR approach, this work demonstrates that thin granular B-NCD films ($t\approx $ 500 nm) on Si have a large penetration depth ($λ_{\rm{L}}\approx 4.3$ to 4.4 $μ$m), and therefore an associated high kinetic inductance ($L_{k,\square} \approx $ 670 to 690 pH/$\square$). These values are much larger t…
Diamond is an electrical insulator in its natural form. However, when doped with boron above a critical level (~0.25 at.%) it can be rendered superconducting at low temperatures with high critical fields. Here we present the realization of a micrometer scale superconducting quantum interference device $μ$-SQUID made from nanocrystalline boron doped diamond (BDD) films. Our results demonstrate that $μ$-SQUIDs made from superconducting diamond can be operated in magnetic fields as large as 4T independent on the field direction. This is a decisive step towards the detection of quantum motion in a…
Diamond quantum-sensing platform with integrated boron-doped diamond microwave antenna and thermometer
School of Engineering, Institute of Science Tokyo（东京科学大学工程学院）；Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science（物质材料研究机构纳米结构研究中心）；Department of Mechanical and Electrical Systems Engineering, Kyoto University of Advanced Science (KUAS)（京都先端科学大学机电系统工程系）；National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST)（量子科学技术研究开发机构）；Graduate School of Science and Technology, Hirosaki University（弘前大学理工研究院）
A new path-integral theory is developed to calculate the photoemission spectra (PES) of correlated many-electron systems. The application to the study on Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 (Bi2212) and boron-doped diamond (BDD) is discussed in details. It is found that the isotopic shift in the angle-resolved photoemission spectra of Bi2212 is due to the off-diagonal quadratic electron-phonon (e-ph) coupling, whereas the presence of electron-electron repulsion partially suppresses this effect. For the BDD, a semiconductor-metal phase transition, which is induced by increasing the e-ph coupling and dopant concentra…
Diamond, a well-known wide-bandgap insulator, becomes a low-temperature superconductor upon substitutional doping of carbon with boron. However, limited boron solubility and significant lattice disorder introduced by boron doping prevent attaining the theoretically-predicted high-temperature superconductivity. Here we present an alternative co-doping approach, based on the combination of ionic gating and boron substitution, in hydrogenated thin films epitaxially grown on (111)- and (110)-oriented single crystals. Gate-dependent electric transport measurements show that the effect of boron dopi…
Boron implantation with in-situ dynamic annealing is used to produce highly conductive sub-surface layers in type IIa (100) diamond plates for the search of a superconducting phase transition. Here we demonstrate that high-fluence MeV ion-implantation, at elevated temperatures avoids graphitization and can be used to achieve doping densities of 6 at.%. In order to quantify the diamond crystal damage associated with implantation Raman spectroscopy was performed, demonstrating high temperature annealing recovers the lattice. Additionally, low-temperature electronic transport measurements show ev…
Homoepitaxial diamond layers doped with boron in the 10^20-10^21 /cm3 range are shown to be type II superconductors with sharp transitions (~0.2K) at temperatures increasing from 0 to 2.1 K with boron contents. The critical concentration for the onset of superconductivity is about 5-7 10^20 /cm3, close to the metal-insulator transition. The H-T phase diagram has been obtained from transport and a.c. susceptibility measurements down to 300mK. These results bring new quantitative constraints on the theoretical models proposed for superconductivity in diamond.
Diamond is an excellent band insulator. However, boron (B) doping is known to induce superconductivity. We present two interesting effects in superconducting B doped diamond (BDD) thin films: i) Wohlleben effect (paramagnetic Meissner effect, PME) and ii) a low field spin glass like susceptibility anomaly. We have performed electrical and magnetic measurements (under pressure in one sample) at dopings (1.4 , 2.6 and 3.6) X 1021 cm-3, in a temperature range 2 - 10 K. PME, a low field anomaly in inhomogeneous superconductors could arise from flux trapping, flux compression, or for non-trivial re…
Superconducting transport properties of granular materials are greatly influenced by the microstructure. We show that in heavily boron-doped diamond films (HBDDF) films some sharp transport features can be manipulated by applying a magnetic field and controlled finite bias current. We demonstrate the conductivity cross-over from dirty metal to the superconducting state through an insulating peak arising at a very low current or magnetic field region and particularly pronounced negative magnetoresistance with periodic oscillatory features. The current-voltage characteristics show features of th…
The magnetic field dependence of the superconductivity in nanocrystalline boron doped diamond thin films is reported. Evidence of a glass state in the phase diagram is presented, as demonstrated by electrical resistance and magnetic relaxation measurements. The position of the phase boundary in the H-T plane is determined from resistance data by detailed fitting to zero-dimensional fluctuation conductivity theory. This allows determination of the boundary between resistive and non-resistive behavior to be made with greater precision than the standard ad hoc onset/midpoint/offset criterion.
We substantiate by calculations that the recently discovered superconductivity below 4 K in 3% boron-doped diamond is caused by electron-phonon coupling of the same type as in MgB$_2$, albeit in 3 dimensions. Holes at the top of the zone-centered, degenerate $σ$-bonding valence band couple strongly to the optical bond-stretching modes. The increase from 2 to 3 dimensions reduces the mode-softening crucial for $T_{c}$ reaching 40 K in MgB$_{2}.$ Even if diamond had the same \emph{bare} coupling constant as MgB$_{2},$ which could be achieved with 10% doping, $T_{c}$ would only be 25 K. Supercond…
In a recent X-ray absorption study in boron doped diamond, Nakamura et al. have seen a well isolated narrow boron impurity band in non-superconducting samples and an additional narrow band at the chemical potential in a superconducting sample. We interpret the beautiful spectra as evidence for upper Hubbard band of a Mott insulating impurity band and an additional metallic `mid-gap band' of a conducting `self-doped' Mott insulator. This supports the basic framework of a recent theory of the present author of strongly correlated impurity band superconductivity (SCIBS) in a template of a wide-ga…
Superconductivity in an uncompensated boron doped diamond, a very recent observation, is strikingly close to an earlier observation of Anderson-Mott insulator to metal transition, prompting us to suggest an electron correlation driven superconductivity in an impurity band. Random coulomb potential remove a three fold orbital degeneracy of boron acceptor states, resulting in an effective single, narrow, tight binding and half filled band of holes. Singlet coupling between spins of neighboring neutral acceptors $B^0-B^0$ is the seed of pairing. Across the insulator to metal transition, a small a…
Heavily-boron-doped diamond films become superconducting with critical temperatures $T_c$ well above 4 K. Here we first measure the reflectivity of such a film down to 5 cm$^{-1}$, by also using Coherent Synchrotron Radiation. We thus determine the optical gap, the field penetration depth, the range of action of the Ferrell-Glover-Tinkham sum rule, and the electron-phonon spectral function. We conclude that diamond behaves as a dirty BCS superconductor.
We present an {\it ab initio} study of the recently discovered superconductivity of boron doped diamond within the framework of a phonon-mediated pairing mechanism. The role of the dopant, in substitutional position, is unconventional in that half of the coupling parameter $λ$ originates in strongly localized defect-related vibrational modes, yielding a very peaked Eliashberg $α^2F(ω)$ function. The electron-phonon coupling potential is found to be extremely large and T$_C$ is limited by the low value of the density of states at the Fermi level.
In this work we present the fabrication and characterization of superconducting nano-mechanical resonators made from nanocrystalline boron doped diamond (BDD). The oscillators can be driven and read out in their superconducting state and show quality factors as high as 40,000 at a resonance frequency of around 10 MHz. Mechanical damping is studied for magnetic fields up to 3 T where the resonators still show superconducting properties. Due to their simple fabrication procedure, the devices can easily be coupled to other superconducting circuits and their performance is comparable with state-of…
In 2004 the discovery of superconductivity in heavily boron-doped diamond (C:B) led to an increasing interest in the superconducting phases of wide-gap semiconductors. Subsequently superconductivity was found in heavily boron-doped cubic silicon (Si:B) and recently in the stochiometric ''mixture'' of heavily boron-doped silicon carbide (SiC:B). The latter system surprisingly exhibits type-I superconductivity in contrast to the type-II superconductors C:B and Si:B. Here we will focus on the specific heat of two different superconducting samples of boron-doped SiC. One of them contains cubic and…
We study within a first-principle approach the band structure, vibrational modes and electron-phonon coupling in boron, aluminum and phosphorus doped silicon in the diamond phase. Our results provide evidences that the recently discovered superconducting transition in boron doped cubic silicon can be explained within a standard phonon-mediated mechanism. The importance of lattice compression and dopant related stretching modes are emphasized. We find that T$_C$ can be increased by one order of magnitude by adopting aluminum doping instead of boron.
The discoveries of superconductivity in heavily boron-doped diamond (C:B) in 2004 and silicon (Si:B) in 2006 renew the interest in the superconducting state of semiconductors. Charge-carrier doping of wide-gap semiconductors leads to a metallic phase from which upon further doping superconductivity can emerge. Recently, we discovered superconductivity in a closely related system: heavily-boron doped silicon carbide (SiC:B). The sample used for that study consists of cubic and hexagonal SiC phase fractions and hence this lead to the question which of them participates in the superconductivity. …
We observe strong softening of optical phonon modes in superconducting (Tc = 4.2 K) boron doped diamond near the Brillouin zone center using inelastic x-ray scattering from a CVD-grown highly oriented sample. The magnitude of the softening, and our observation that it becomes stronger approaching zone center, supports theoretical models suggesting a phonon-mediated pairing mechanism via coupling of optical phonon modes to Fermi surfaces around the zone center. The electron-phonon coupling parameter is determined as approximately lambda= 0.33.
