Homoepitaxial Diamond Devices

Diamond has been proposed as an excellent material for high‐temperature, high‐power, and high‐frequency applications. The interest in diamond electronics is due to its large electric breakdown field, high‐saturated current velocity and high‐thermal conductivity. As silicon and gallium arsenide devices begin to reach their performance limits, there is a need to develop new, better performing materials such as diamond. Significant progress in the development of diamond as a semiconducting material has been made and diamond has been implemented into numerous conventional and novel device designs. In this work homoepitaxial diamond material properties and device performance are reviewed. In summary, the large activation energy of boron‐doped p‐type diamond and phosphorus‐doped n‐type diamond severely limits diamond's use in conventional semiconductor device designs. The large activation energy reduces the number of charge carriers, which limits the current handling capability and produces temperature‐dependent device performance. To overcome diamond's limitations, novel devices, such as enhancement mode field effect transistors (FETs) that use a hydrogenated surface conducting layer or pulsed doped devices with almost complete ionization, have been investigated. These devices require further development. The initial results show promise for high‐temperature, high‐frequency, and high‐power applications.