Diamond surface properties show a strong dependence on its chemical termination. Hydrogen-terminated and oxygen-terminated diamonds are the most studied terminations with many applications in the electronic and bioelectronic device field. One of the main techniques for the characterization of diamond surface terminations is X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). In this sense, the use of angleresolved XPS (ARXPS) experiments allows obtaining depth-dependent information used here to evidence (100)Oterminated diamond surface atomic configuration when fabricated by acid treatment. The results were used to compare the chemistry changes occurring during the oxidation process using a sublayer XPS intensity model. The formation of nondiamond carbon phases at the subsurface and higher oxygen contents were shown to result from the oxygenation treatment. A new (100) 1 × 1:O surface reconstruction model is proposed to explain the XPS quantification results of Oterminated diamond.
Keywords: H-terminated diamond; O-terminated diamond; angleresolved XPS; diamond surface reconstruction.