High quality chemical vapor deposition diamond growth on iron and stainless steel substrates

Abstract

Due to the catalytic effect and the rapid diffusion coefficients of carbon species into iron-based materials such as iron and 18-8 stainless steel [18% chrome (Cr) and 8% nickel (Ni)], it is very difficult to produce diamond grains on such substrates. However, diamond growth on iron-based materials is extremely important for mechanical and electrical applications, since these materials are widely used in industrial field and fundamental science. In our previous study, diamond nucleation and subsequent growth have been precisely controlled by the residence time of the source gas, which is an essential parameter. Here, we have carried out diamond growth on iron-based materials using the hot-filament chemical vapor deposition technique with varying residence times. At low residence times, diamond grains with practically useful growth rate are grown. The growth rate of diamond grains on stainless steel substrates was a factor of about 10 greater than that on a regular silicon substrate at optimum conditions. At optimized conditions, diamond growths with high crystalline quality on stainless steel substrates were confirmed by Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The full width of half maximums of the Raman peaks for diamonds grown in this study are comparable to the ones of natural diamonds.