A novel microwave plasma reactor with a unique structure for chemical vapor deposition of diamond films

With the aid of numerical simulation, a novel microwave plasma reactor for diamond films deposition has been designed. The new reactor possesses a unique structure, neither purely cylindrical nor purely ellipsoidal, but a combination of the both. In this paper, the design strategy of the new reactor together with a simple but reliable phenomenological simulation method will be described. Preliminary experiments show that uniform diamond films of high quality could be deposited using the new reactor, and the deposition rate of diamond films is typically about 3μm/h at 6kW input power level on a 2inch diameter silicon substrate. •The proposed microwave plasma reactor has a novel structure, which is the combination of cylinder and ellipsoid.•A simple but effective simulation method is established to design the microwave plasma reactor.•An ingenious design has been adopted to solve the problem of parasitic plasma, which has not been reported before.•The results of both simulation and experiments show a good performance of the newly designed reactor.