Abstract
The seedings of the substrate with a suspension of nanodiamond particles (NDPs) were widely used as nucleation seeds to enhance the growth of nanostructured diamond films. The formation of agglomerates in the suspension of NDPs, however, may have adverse impact on the initial growth period. Therefore, this paper was aimed at the surface modification of the NDPs to enhance the diamond nucleation for the growth of nanocrystalline diamond films which could be used in photovoltaic applications. Hydrogen plasma, thermal, and surfactant treatment techniques were employed to improve the dispersion characteristics of detonation nanodiamond particles in aqueous media. The seeding of silicon substrate was then carried out with an optimized spin-coating method. The results of both Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering measurements demonstrated that plasma treated diamond nanoparticles possessed polar surface functional groups and attained high dispersion in methanol. The nanocrystalline diamond films deposited by microwave plasma jet chemical vapour deposition exhibited extremely fine grain and high smooth surfaces (~6.4 nm rms) on the whole film. These results indeed open up a prospect of nanocrystalline diamond films in solar cell applications.
Highlights
Since chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond films possess many outstanding properties of diamond with low dimensional structure, they have increasingly attracted interests in the area of nanomanufacturing including semiconductor, optics, biomedical, and biosensor engineering [1–6]
In a typical diamond film grown by CVD techniques, the surface roughness is directly related to the diamond nucleation enhancement which is known as “pretreatment”
The X-ray diffractometer (XRD) pattern of the A-nanodiamond particles (NDPs) demonstrated that the heavy metal and nondiamond carbon impurities that existed in pristine diamond particle samples, on the whole, were thoroughly removed by the acid treatment procedures
Summary
Since chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond films possess many outstanding properties of diamond with low dimensional structure, they have increasingly attracted interests in the area of nanomanufacturing including semiconductor, optics, biomedical, and biosensor engineering [1–6]. High quality undoped CVD diamond films with n- and p-type characteristics have been successfully manufactured by the most common techniques including microwave plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (MPECVD) and hot filament chemical vapour deposition (HFCVD) [7–10]. The CVD-deposited diamond film normally consists of diamond grains and grain boundaries containing impurities as well as nondiamond carbon phase. The diamond grains and grain boundaries have significant effects on the electrical properties, and the surface roughness of the diamond films. In a typical diamond film grown by CVD techniques, the surface roughness is directly related to the diamond nucleation enhancement which is known as “pretreatment”
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