Abstract
Owing to its extreme hardness, chemical stability and robustness, conductive diamond is an attractive material for scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The selection of a suitable diamond and preparation of the STM tip is a challenge because electrically conductive diamonds can be grown using various methods and have anisotropic properties. A new method for the selection of conductive diamonds that is based on the registration and analysis of the tunneling I-V (TIV) characteristics of the tunnel junction between the diamond tip and graphite (0 0 0 1) surface at a constant tunneling gap is proposed. TIV should be monotonous while the tunneling currents vary from 0.1 to 6 nA with increasing bias voltages from 0.05 to 1 V. We found that HPHT diamonds grown in the Fe-Al-C-B growth system are more suitable for STM probs compared to grown in the Fe-Co-C-B system. • Tunnel current-voltage characteristics are a promising method for nanoscale study of the uniformity of impurity distribution in electrically conductive diamonds. • The Fe-Al-C-B growth system is more suitable for the growing HPHT diamonds for STM tips compared to the Fe-Co-C-B system.
Published Version
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