Shallow donors in diamond: Chalcogens, pnictogens, and their hydrogen complexes

The utility of diamond as an electronic material is compromised by the lack of a suitable shallow donor. Here, ab initio theory is used to investigate the donor levels of substitutional pnictogen (N, P, As, and Sb) and chalcogen (S, Se, and Te) impurities and chalcogen-hydrogen defects in diamond. Substitutional S is found to be a deep donor, while As and Sb possess donor levels significantly shallower than P, which so far is the most effective shallow donor found by experiment.