ESR Study of the Paramagnetic Defects in Free Standing Diamond Films

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is widely used to grow diamond polycrystalline thin films. However at present the films synthesized by CVD contain a fairly large amount of defects. Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) has been used for the study paramagnetic impurities and defects, predetermine the physicochemical properties of synthetic diamond. The defects may present an important obstacle if the films are used as semiconducting materials. Correlations between the number of broken carbon bonds and conductivity in diamond [1], and diamond-like films [2] are being found. Over recent years the ESR study of diamond layers, grown by microwave plasma CVD [3,4] has been reported.