On the band-A emission and boron related luminescence in diamond

Cathodoluminescence spectra of undoped and boron-doped diamond films are reported and are compared with each other. The dominant spectra feature of these samples is the broad luminescence bands centered around 2.83 and 2.32 eV in undoped and relatively heavily doped samples, respectively. Our result indicates that the commonly observed 2.83 eV band (often called by the name ‘‘band-A’’) is neither related to boron nor to donor-acceptor pairs in diamond. From all of the available data, we conclude that the 2.32 eV band is due to boron related centers and the 2.83 eV band is due to dislocations in diamond.