The effect of substrate temperature on the morphology of diamond films grown under acetylene-lean and acetylene-rich conditions

The effect of substrate temperature on the morphology of diamond films grown by chemical vapor deposition is examined. Under some conditions increasing substrate temperature causes the film morphology to shift from {100} toward {111} faceting, whereas under other conditions exactly the opposite trend is observed. It is found that the factor that differentiates these two regimes is the abundance of acetylene relative to C radicals (mainly CH and in some cases C) at the growth surface. This 1 3 conclusion is reached by comparing two new sets of experiments, in which diamond films were deposited using an RF thermal plasma operating at either 200 or 700 Torr, with each other as well as with other results in the literature for several different growth environments. 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.