Fabrication of Vertically Aligned Diamond Whiskers from Highly Boron-Doped Diamond by Oxygen Plasma Etching

Abstract

Conductive diamond whiskers were fabricated by maskless oxygen plasma etching on highly boron-doped diamond substrates. The effects of the etching conditions and the boron concentration in diamond on the whisker morphology and overall substrate coverage were investigated. High boron-doping levels (greater than 8.4 × 10(20) cm(-3)) are crucial for the formation of the nanosized, densely packed whiskers with diameter of ca. 20 nm, length of ca. 200 nm, and density of ca. 3.8 × 10(10) cm(-2) under optimal oxygen plasma etching conditions (10 min at a chamber pressure of 20 Pa). Confocal Raman mapping and scanning electron microscopy illustrate that the boron distribution in the diamond surface region is consistent with the distribution of whisker sites. The boron dopant atoms in the diamond appear to lead to the initial fine column formation. This simple method could provide a facile, cost-effective means for the preparation of conductive nanostructured diamond materials for electrochemical applications as well as electron emission devices.

Diamond Nanowires: Fabrication, Structure, Properties and Applications

“…Numerous efforts have been directed to develop the synthetic methods of diamond nanowires, such as reactive-ion-etching (RIE) [18][19][20][21][22][23], plasma post-treatment carbon nanotubes [24,25], transfer fullerene to diamond nanowires at high temperature and high pressure [26], template or catalyst assisted CVD method [26,27], etc.…”

“…This straightforward method displays several advantages as it does not require any complicated processing steps such as mask deposition and removal. Until now, this maskless RIE method has been widely used to realize diamond nanowires [18,[49][50][51][52][53].…”

Diamant‐Nanodrähte: Herstellung, Struktur, Eigenschaften und Anwendungen

“…Die erhaltenen Diamant-Nanodrähte wurden biofunktionalisiert und für die DNA-Sensorik verwendet. [69,70] [30,[76][77][78][79][80] …”

“…Theoretische Berechnungen der Eigenschaften von Diamant-Nanodrähten und Nanostäben [24][25][26][27] weisen auf faszinierende Eigenschaften von Diamant-Nanodrähten hin, erklären sie zu einem interessanten und zugänglichen Syntheseziel und ermutigten auch uns bei der Suche nach Verfahren zu ihrer Herstellung. In zahlreichen Forschungsarbeiten wurden Syntheseverfahren für DiamantNanodrähte entwickelt, einschließlich reaktives Ionenätzen ("reactive ion etching", RIE), [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] Plasma-Nachbehandlung von Kohlenstoff-Nanorçhren, [36,37] Umwandlung von Fulleren in Diamant-Nanorçhren bei hoher Temperatur und hohem Druck [38] und Templat-oder Katalysator-unterstützte CVDVerfahren ("chemical vapor deposition", chemische Gasphasenabscheidung). [39,40] Die Synthese von Diamant-Nanodrähten erwies sich aber als Vorgang mit niedriger Wahrscheinlichkeit, der sehr schwer zu reproduzieren ist, obwohl wir und andere viele Versuche dazu unternahmen und trotz vieler interessanter Anwendungsmçglichkeiten, z.…”

Preferential {100} etching of boron-doped diamond electrodes and diamond particles by CO2 activation

“…The etching of diamond has been studied both from fundamental standpoints [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] as well as for practical applications in conductive diamond electrodes [8][9][10][11][12].…”