Self-consistent modeling of microwave activated N₂/CH₄/H₂ (and N₂/H₂) plasmas relevant to diamond chemical vapor deposition

Abstract The growth rate of diamond by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) from microwave (MW) plasma activated CH 4 /H 2 gas mixtures can be significantly enhanced adding trace quantities N to the process mixture. Reasons for this increase remain unclear. present article reports new, self-consistent two-dimensional modeling MW and /CH plasmas operating at pressures powers relevant contemporary CVD, results which are compared tensioned against available experimental data. N/C/H reveals very limited reactivity under typical processing conditions dominance atoms among dilute ‘soup’ potentially reactive N-containing species incident on growing surface. Ways in these various may enhance rates also discussed.