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The mechanical, thermal, chemical, and tribological properties of diamond make it an ideal material for the fabrication of MEMS components. However, conventional CVD diamond deposition methods result in either a coarse-grained pure diamond structure that prevents high- resolution patterning, or in a fine-grained diamond film with a significant amount of intergranular non-diamond carbon. At Argonne National Laboratory, we are able to produce phase-pure ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) films for the fabrication of MEMS components. UNCD is grown by microwave plasma CVD using C60-Ar or CH4-Ar plasmas, resulting in films that have 3-5 nm grain size, are 10-20 times smoother than conventionally grown diamond films, and can have mechanical properties similar to that of single crystal diamond. We used lithographic patterning, lift-off, and etching, in conjunction with the capability for growing UNCD on SiO2 to fabricate 2-D and 3-D UNCD-MEMS structures. We have performed initial characterization of mechanical properties by using nanoindentation and in-situ TEM indentor techniques. The values of Hardness (∼88 GPa) and Young's modulus (∼ 864 GPa) measured are very close to those of single crystal diamond (100 GPa and 1000 GPa respectively). The results show that UNCD is a promising material for future high performance MEMS devices.

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