On the transition between space-charge-free and space-charge-limited conduction in diamond

Carrier transport in a high-purity single-crystalline CVD diamond sample was studied using the Time-of-Flight technique with optical UV excitation. By varying the intensity of the optical excitation over four orders of magnitude, the transition between space-charge-free and space-charge-limited hole conduction in diamond is directly observed. Experimentally, we find that even a relatively small injected charge appreciably affects the drift velocity measurements. To achieve a relative error in drift velocity less than 1%, the injected charge has to be less than 0.01 CU, where C is the sample capacitance and U the applied bias.