Effects of local facet and lattice damage on nucleation of diamond grown by microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

Diamond deposition on an anisotropic etched Si and ion implanted Si surfaces have been examined here for the first time. Local facets on an anisotropic etched surface shows no nucleation of diamond. Synthetic diamond, in contrast, has been able to nucleate on an As+ or Si+ ion implanted Si substrate without diamond abrasive pretreatment. Selective deposition of diamond occurs only for low dose ion implantation, 100 keV 1014 cm−2, but not for high dose ion implantation, 100 KeV 1016 cm−2. Strain is proposed as the main reason for nucleation of diamond on the ion implanted Si substrates.

Tribological behavior of polycrystalline and single-crystal silicon

“…Due to the fact that the Si-H and Si-H2 bonds are inherently weaker than the C-H and C-H2 bonds, lower temperatures are needed to dehydrogenate Si than diamond. Since dangling surface bonds form more readily on (100), a partially dehydrogenated (100) developes into a higher energy surface than the (111) plane [33][34][35][36]. The crossover in 7 occurs at 0.83 monolayers of hydrogen for C(111) and C(100) [30].…”

“…Although the data were developed for diamond, the trend for Si should be the same. The higher energy and thus more reactive Si(100) facet etches faster chemically [34,36] and forms lower Schottky barriers against metals [25,37,38].…”

Studies on nucleation process in diamond CVD: an overview of recent developments

“…Implantation of C + (10 18 ions cm -2 , 65-120 keV) on Cu [32] and As + (10 14 ions cm -2 , 100 keV) on Si [105,128] enhances diamond nucleation, while Ar + implantation (3×10 15 ions cm -2 , 100 keV) on Si [129] decreases nucleation density. The lattice damages (strain, amorphous disorder and twinning) created by ion implantation are deemed to be responsible for nucleation enhancement [105]. The strain is probably the primary physical reason for diamond nucleation enhancement on ion implanted substrates [105].…”

“…The lattice damages (strain, amorphous disorder and twinning) created by ion implantation are deemed to be responsible for nucleation enhancement [105]. The strain is probably the primary physical reason for diamond nucleation enhancement on ion implanted substrates [105].…”

“…Nucleation on pretreated surfaces is observed to occur primarily on carbon-rich particles or defects, such as scratches, grain boundaries, particle boundaries, dislocations, electron bombardment damages, and edges of etch pits/craters [39,72,75,79]. Pulsed laser irradiation + coating a-C, WC, cBN layer enhancement [106] Carburization enhancement [31,70] As schematically depicted in Figure 4 [72], nucleation enhancement by scratching is attributed to (a) seeding effect [78,98,107], (b) minimization of interfacial energy on sharp convex surfaces [20,108], (c) breaking of a number of surface bonds or presence of a number of dangling bonds at sharp edges [100], (d) strain field effects [105], (e) rapid carbon saturation (fast carbide formation) at sharp edges [72,109], and (f) removal of surface oxides [39,100]. Another possible operating mechanism [13,71] for the nucleation enhancement by scratching is that scratching produces non-volatile graphitic particles through local pyrolysis of absorbed hydrocarbons.…”