Photoenhancement of the photoconductivity (PC) of electron irradiated semiconducting diamond

The spectrum of the non-enhanced PC of electron irradiated semiconducting diamond extends from the UV towards the visible and near infrared. It's long wavelength tail was found in the present work to exhibit a well defined threshold shifted with temperature from about 1.5eV at 76 K to about 1.25 eV at 500 K. Pre-illumination in the “UV-band” produced an enhanced PC band with a temperature independent threshold at 1.08 0.03 eV. This photoenhanced band was found to be closely related to a thermally-simulated current peak (TSC) at 500 K with an activation energy of 0.50 eV excited by the pre-illumination in the UV-band. The prhotenhanced band was bleached out thermally with the exhaustion of the TSC peak below 600 K. Some of the characteristics of the photoenhanced band including the linear dependence of the square root of the PC on photon energy may suggest that internal photoemission of holes plays a role in the formation of this band.