Textured growth of diamond on silicon via in situ carburization and bias-enhanced nucleation

Ordered diamond films have been deposited on single-crystal silicon substrates via an in situ carburization followed by bias-enhanced nucleation. Textured diamond films with greater than 50% of the grains oriented D(100)//Si(100) and D〈110〉//Si〈110〉 were grown in both a horizontal and vertical microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition reactor. Separate diamond films from each of the two reactors were analyzed both by scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The in situ carburization is speculated to form an epitaxial SiC conversion layer, thus providing an economical alternative to obtaining epitaxial diamond films on single-crystal SiC.