Impurity and defect incorporation in diamond films deposited at low substrate temperatures

Abstract

Abstract The quality of CVD diamond films degrades severely with decreasing substrate temperatures. In this report, the impurity and defect incorporation in diamond films deposited from a carbon-hydrogen-oxygen gas system at substrate temperatures between 560 and 345 C has been investigated using elastic recoil detection (ERD), FTIR and micro-Raman spectroscopy. In approaching the low temperature limit which coincides with the formation of cauliflower morphologies, the hydrogen incorporation rises steeply. Hydrogen contents beyond 1 at.% have been measured, roughly 20 times higher than in the upper temperature range. By contrast, there was a much smaller rate of rise in the concentration of nitrogen and oxygen, despite a marked change in the microstructure of the deposited films. At the lowest substrate temperatures, the absolute hydrogen content measured by ERD increases more steeply than those measured by FTIR spectroscopy, which refers to C-H stretch vibrations only. There is evidence that hydrogen is incorporated also in the bulk rather than being concentrated at grain boundaries as at higher temperatures. This conclusion is supported by micro-Raman spectroscopy exhibiting significant peak broadening in the low temperature region.