Superinjection in diamond homojunction P-I-N

Diamond and many newly emerged semiconductor materials show outstanding optical and magnetic properties. However, they cannot be as efficiently doped as silicon or gallium arsenide, which limits their practical applicability. Here, we report a superinjection effect in diamond p-i-n diodes, which gives the possibility to inject orders of magnitude more electrons into the i-region of the diode than the doping of the n-type injection layer allows. Moreover, we show that the efficiency of electron injection can be further improved using an i-p grating implemented in the i-region. The predicted superinjection effect enables to overcome fundamental limitations related to the high activation energy of donors in diamond and gives the possibility to design high-performance devices.