Hall hole mobility in boron-doped homoepitaxial diamond

Hall hole mobility of boron-doped homoepitaxial (100) diamond samples has been investigated in the temperature range of 100-900 K, both experimentally and theoretically. The temperature dependence of the mobility measured in high-quality and low boron-doped materials was compared with theoretical calculations to determine the phonon-hole coupling constants (deformation potential for acoustic phonons and coupling constant for optical phonons). The maximum hole mobility is found to be close to 2000 cm(2)/Vs at room temperature. For boron-doped material, the hole scattering by neutral boron atoms is shown to be important in diamond due to the high ionization energy of the boron acceptor. The doping dependence of the Hall hole mobility is established for boron-doping levels ranging between 10(14) and 10(20) cm(-3) at 300 and 500 K. The physical reasons which make diamond a semiconductor with a higher mobility than other semiconductors of column IV are discussed.