Growth of oriented diamond film on single crystalline 6H-SiC substrates

Abstract

The bias-enhanced nucleation (BEN) technique in hot-filament chemical vapor deposition (HF-CVD) has been applied to single crystalline 6H-SiC substrates for the deposition of oriented diamond. The results of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that on (000 $$\bar 1$$ ) face not only oriented diamond with relationship (111) Dia.//(000 $$\bar 1$$ )6H-SiC and 〈110〉Dia.//(11 $$\bar 2$$ 0)6H-SiC, but also high nucleation density (>109 cm−2) have been achieved. In the case of deposition on (0001) face of 6H-SiC under the same experimental conditions, although the nucleation density of diamond was enhanced, however, oriented diamond was not found. Diamond nucleation density is higher on (0001) face than that on (000 $$\bar 1$$ ) face. The differences in diamond oriented nucleation and nucleation density on these two faces are attributed to the difference of their specific free surface energy. The experimental results have shown that the 6H-SiC substrate surfaces are etched by the accelerated H-ions during BEN process, and many micro-triangular crystals with the faces of the kind {01 $$\bar 1$$ 4} are formed on the substrate surface. Diamonds nucleate on the top of the micro-triangular crystals. Micro-Raman spectrum shows a strong feature of diamond crystals at 1334 cm−1.