Etching of CVD diamond films using oxygen ions in ECR plasma

Abstract

Etching with oxygen ions produced by ECR plasma with an asymmetric magnetic mirror field was investigated as a potential technique for polishing CVD diamond. The morphology, structure and roughness of the diamond film surface before and after etching were analyzed respectively using scanning electron microscope (SEM), Raman spectroscopy and surface roughness measuring instrument. It was found that the ridges on diamond surface had been preferentially etched away and thereby the surface roughness decreased from 3.061 to 1.083μm after 4h etching. Meanwhile, non-diamond phase appeared on surface and dramatically increased with the extending of etching time. In order to fundamentally understand the etching mechanism, an etching model of diamond film was reasonably proposed on the ground of the experimental results and the theory of plasma physics. The as-generated ions taking screw movement are firstly accelerated along the magnetic field lines in the plasma and collisional presheath, and then deflected from their route towards the diamond film in the MP. When coming into Debye sheath, the motion of ions will be deflected further and strongly accelerated by electric field in the direction normal to the (111) crystal facets. This process gave rise to energetic ion bombardment towards every (111) crystal face, and thereby caused preferential etching of pyramidal crystallites.