Electrical Measurements on Type IIb Diamonds

Characterizing Natural-Color Type IIb Blue Diamonds

“…Electrical measurements (Leivo and Smoluchowski, 1955;Custers, 1955;Brophy, 1955;Austin and Wolfe, 1956;Dyer and Wedepohl, 1956;Wedepohl, 1956;Collins and Williams, 1971) showed that type IIb diamonds behave as semiconductors: The electrical conductivity increases with increasing temperature. These measurements also revealed that the conductivity is p-type.…”

Diamond electronic devices-a critical appraisal

“…Because of the lack of suitable n-type diamond, rectifying junctions can only be made using Schottky barriers. Dyer and Wedepohl (1956) demonstrated that a pointcontact rectifier can be made using natural type IIb diamond, and Glover (1973) and Lightowlers and Collins (1976) produced Schottky barriers on synthetic and natural semiconducting diamond, respectively, using vacuum-evaporated gold contacts. The latter investigations were carried out to measure acceptor concentrations by the differential capacitance technique, but it was also noted that the current-voltage characteristics exhibited rectifying behaviour with high forward-to-backward ratios, particularly for the natural diamonds.…”

The Electronic and Optical Properties of Diamond; Do they Favour Device Applications?

“…Early measurements used either point contacts [8] or vacuum evaporated gold contacts [38,39]. Both techniques produce diode characteristics with high forward-to-backward ratios, particularly for the natural diamonds.…”

“…Early investigations of natural type lIb diamond showed that metal contacts have rectifying properties [8,9] and that the contacts remain rectifying at temperatures up to 300*C [9]. At sufficiently high electric fields blue electroluminescence (with a maximum near 440 nm) is observed [10].…”