Homoepitaxial Diamond Growth by Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

Abstract

Both carbon and silicon are group IV members, but carbon has the smaller atomic number. Diamond, with the same crystalline structure as that of silicon, is expected to act as the basic material for the next generation of high-power electronic, optoelectronic, bio/chemical electronic, quantum computing devices, etc. This is because diamond exhibits electrical properties similar to those of silicon, while having superior physical properties. In this chapter, the author reviewed and discussed the homoepitaxial growth of high-quality single-crystal diamond films with atomically flat surfaces, by using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD).

Fabrication of (111)-faced single-crystal diamond plates by laser nucleated cleaving

“…As shown in Fig. 5(c), the areas between Wallner lines exhibit atomically-flat (111) surfaces characterized by micronscale, triangular terraces with step heights consistent with the expected 0.206 nm spacing of (111) atomic planes [4]. The terraces are occasionally intersected by linear features as observed in the bottom-left of Fig.…”

“…Additionally, the LNC process has potential for reducing or completely eliminating plate wedge, which adversely affects diamond photonic devices [9,10,19,52]. In addition to generating (111)-faced SCD substrates for diamond electronics, photonics, and quantum technologies, LNC will also prove useful for fabricating seed crystals required for improving CVD growth of customized [111]-oriented samples [2,4,28,36,37,53].…”

“…Advances in homoepitaxial chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of high-purity single-crystal diamond (SCD) have made the exceptional material properties of SCD available for a variety of new and exciting applications [1][2][3][4]. In particular, the wide bandgap, high carrier mobility, large thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility of SCD have enabled new devices for high-power electronics [5], ultraviolet light sources [6] and detectors [7], nonlinear optics [8][9][10], quantum information processing [11], biomedical applications [12,13], magnetometry [14], and integrated photonics [15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…While (100)-faced SCD plates are commonly produced by homoepitaxial CVD, growth of (111)-faced SCD plates has proven challenging due to twinning and stacking faults that form along 111 directions [2,28,36]. Despite some recent advances [4,37], inherent challenges still remain in growing (111)-oriented layers thicker than ≈100 nm with low surface roughness. For this reason, macroscopic (111)faced plates are typically cut from larger (100)-faced starting plates using micro-machining laser ablation tools [38] and subsequent polishing steps are used to reduce the surface roughness [39,40].…”

Boron Doped Diamond Electrodes in Flow-Based Systems

“…Two methods of activation are dominant in the field: hot filaments or microwave reactors (Butler et al, 2009). The gas mixture that supplies the reaction chamber usually is compounded by methane (as carbon source) dispersed in a large amount of hydrogen (radical source and carrier gas) (Pleskov et al, 1987; Tokuda, 2015). The use of a mixture of acetone and methanol as carbon source were also reported (Yano, 1998; Rao et al, 2000; Ivandini et al, 2002, 2007).…”