Two-dimensional ambipolar carriers of giant density at the diamond/cubic-BN(111) interfaces: toward complementary...

The extremely difficult ambipolar doping activation greatly hinders the outstanding performance of diamond for electronic devices. The main concern has been devoted to surface conduction by two-dimensional (2D) carriers. 2D hole gas (2DHG) in the diamond is induced by surface transfer doping dominated by the adsorbate's status and faces stability issues. Meanwhile, a feasible way to generate the other essential ambipolar carrier-2D electron gas (2DEG) is still lacking. We propose that the well-lattice-matched diamond/cBN(111) interfaces can spontaneously induce 2D ambipolar carriers with a giant density of 4.17 × 10¹⁴ cm^-2, an order higher than other competitors. 2DEG and 2DHG can be separately achieved near the hetero-interfaces consisting of C-N and C-B bonds, respectively. Interestingly, the robust 2D charges are derived from a novel bulk-induced polarization-discontinuity at the interfaces, which can be attributed to an unexpected non-zero formal polarization of centrosymmetric cBN along the [111] direction. The existence of 2D ambipolar carriers at the diamond/cBN(111) interfaces has resolved the missing n-type conduction in diamond, thus opening up possibilities for complementary logic applications. Additionally, the high density of quantum-confined 2D ambipolar carriers provides an excellent platform for strongly correlated systems, which could lead to novel quantum information processing applications.