Nucleation of Diamond Films on Surfaces Using Carbon Clusters

摘要

A unique method for nucleating diamond films on surfaces using carbon clusters isdescribed. The process substitutes the need for diamond polish pretreatment of substrates prior to diamond films growth as currently practiced in low pressure chemical vapor deposition methods. As an example, the use of the carbon clusters as nucleating layers on single crystal silicon surfaces is presented. It is shown that a thin layer of pure carbon C70 is sufficient for the nucleation and growth of the fine grain polycrystalline diamond films. The enhancement of nucleation by the C70 layer is nearly ten orders of magnitude over an treated silicon surface. It also follows that carbon clusters can be used as a one-step lithographic template for growing diamond on selected regions of the substrate. In addition, insight into the mechanism for diamond nucleation from carbon clusters is given.