Synchrotron radiation x-ray absorption of ion bombardment induced defects on diamond (100)

Abstract

The surface defect structures on diamond (100) surfaces induced by 500 eV neon ion bombardment and by subsequent annealing were studied in situ with x-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy using 250–800 eV synchrotron radiation and with low energy electron diffraction. Ex situ x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) was also used to characterize the defective layer. Significant changes in the XANES spectra were identified for the defects induced by ion bombardment and subsequent annealing. The diamond discrete exciton absorption at 289.0 eV was clearly suppressed even at the lowest ion fluence used in this study, i.e., 3×1014/cm2, and no such exciton could be observed at 7×1014/cm2. However, the changes in the multi-maxima shape-resonance absorption structure in the range of 290–310 eV indicated that a loss of the diamond long range order required a fluence of 1×1015/cm2. The structural changes were also manifested by the transformation of gap state absorption typical of clean 2×1 surfaces to the π* absorption typical of amorphous carbon. XPS showed that the defective layer was about 2 nm thick. For all samples prepared with the bombardment conditions in the study, both the XANES and XPS data also indicated no phase transformation from defective layers to graphite even after annealing to a temperature of 1100 °C.