Fabrication of obliquely-aligned single crystalline diamond nanostructures and their arrays

Abstract

The polycrystalline diamond film on silicon substrates is used as a starting material to fabricate three different single crystalline nanostructures by employing the bias-assisted reactive ion etching technique in hydrogen plasma. The gold layer was sputtered on the top of the films as an etching mask to produce the high-density arrays of nanocones, nanopillars and nanofibers. The well-aligned nanostructures are uniformly distributed over large surface areas, and have a tilted angle of 60° to the substrate. Meanwhile, Raman measurement confirms that no stress is introduced into the nanostructures during the etching process. The nanostructures with the unique morphologies have potential applications in various diamond-based devices.