Title
In/extrinsic granularity in superconducting boron-doped diamond
Date Issued
01 October 2010
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
conference paper
Author(s)
Zhang G.
Vanacken J.
Moshchalkov V.V.
Guillamon I.
Suderow H.
Vieira S.
Janssens S.D.
Haenen K.
Wagner P.
Abstract
When charge carriers are introduced in diamond, e.g. by chemical doping with Boron (B), the C1-xBx diamond:B can exhibit an insulator-to-metal transition (pMott∼2×1020cm-3). Under even heavier boron doping (nB∼1021cm-3), diamond becomes superconducting. Using microwave plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) we have prepared diamond:B thin films with critical offset temperatures TC below 3 K. We have investigated the transport properties of these diamond:B thin films, which show pronounced granular effects. It turns out, that this granularity is both intrinsic as well as extrinsic. The extrinsic granularity is the effect of the growth method which needs to start from a seeding of the substrate with detonation nanodiamond, which acts as nucleation centers for further MPCVD growth of the film. In using SPM/STM techniques, we also observed intrinsic granularity, meaning that within physical grains, we observe also a strong intragrain modulation of the order parameter. As a consequence of these granularities, the transport properties show evidence of (i) strong superconducting fluctuations and (ii) Cooper pair tunneling and/or quasiparticle tunneling. The latter effects explain the observed negative magnetoresistance. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Start page
853
End page
856
Volume
470
Issue
19
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería de materiales
Física de la materia condensada
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-77956179108
Source
Physica C: Superconductivity and its Applications
ISSN of the container
09214534
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus