Ground-state properties of boron-doped diamond

Boron-doped diamond undergoes an insulator-metal or even a superconducting transition at some critical value of the dopant concentration. We study the equilibrium lattice parameter and bulk modulus of boron-doped diamond experimentally and in the framework of the density functional method for different levels of boron doping. We theoretically consider the possibility for the boron atoms to occupy both substitutional and interstitial positions and investigate their influence on the electronic structure of the material. The data suggest that boron softens the lattice, but softening due to substitutions of carbon with boron is much weaker than due to incorporation of boron into interstitial positions. Theoretical results obtained for substitution of carbon are in very good agreement with our experiment. We present a concentration dependence of the lattice parameter in boron-doped diamond, which can be used for to identify the levels of boron doping in future experiments.