Metal-to-insulator transition and superconductivity in boron-doped diamond.

The experimental discovery of superconductivity in boron-doped diamond came as a major surprise to both the diamond and the superconducting materials communities. The main experimental results obtained since then on single-crystal diamond epilayers are reviewed and applied to calculations, and some open questions are identified. The critical doping of the metal-to-insulator transition (MIT) was found to coincide with that necessary for superconductivity to occur. Some of the critical exponents of the MIT were determined and superconducting diamond was found to follow a conventional type II behaviour in the dirty limit, with relatively high critical temperature values quite close to the doping-induced insulator-to-metal transition. This could indicate that on the metallic side both the electron-phonon coupling and the screening parameter depend on the boron concentration. In our view, doped diamond is a potential model system for the study of electronic phase transitions and a stimulating example for other semiconductors such as germanium and silicon.

Superconductivity in doped cubic silicon.

Although the local resistivity of semiconducting silicon in its standard crystalline form can be changed by many orders of magnitude by doping with elements, superconductivity has so far never been achieved. Hybrid devices combining silicon's semiconducting properties and superconductivity have therefore remained largely underdeveloped. Here we report that superconductivity can be induced when boron is locally introduced into silicon at concentrations above its equilibrium solubility. For sufficiently high boron doping (typically 100 p.p.m.) silicon becomes metallic. We find that at a higher boron concentration of several per cent, achieved by gas immersion laser doping, silicon becomes superconducting. Electrical resistivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements show that boron-doped silicon (Si:B) made in this way is a superconductor below a transition temperature T(c) approximately 0.35 K, with a critical field of about 0.4 T. Ab initio calculations, corroborated by Raman measurements, strongly suggest that doping is substitutional. The calculated electron-phonon coupling strength is found to be consistent with a conventional phonon-mediated coupling mechanism. Our findings will facilitate the fabrication of new silicon-based superconducting nanostructures and mesoscopic devices with high-quality interfaces.

Tunneling spectroscopy and vortex imaging in boron-doped diamond.

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 Delta(0)/kBTc approximately 1.74. Vortex imaging at low magnetic field also reveals localized states inside the vortex core that are unexpected for such a dirty superconductor.

Dependence of the superconducting transition temperature on the doping level in single-crystalline diamond films.

Homoepitaxial diamond layers doped with boron in the 10(20)-10(21) cm(-3) range are shown to be type II superconductors with sharp transitions (approximately 0.2 K) at temperatures increasing from 0 to 2.1 K with boron contents. The critical concentration for the onset of superconductivity in those 001-oriented single-crystalline films is about 5-7 10(20) cm(-3). The H-T phase diagram has been obtained from transport and ac-susceptibility measurements down to 300 mK.