Abstract
AbstractWe employed in situ ellipsometry to monitor and study the nucleation and growth processes of diamond thin films fabricated by chemical vapor deposition. The films were grown on Si substrates in a hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) system. We monitored the effective extinction coefficient (k) at 1.96 eV of the diamond films during growth through ellipsometry. The behavior of this parameter was found to be reproducible, making it suitable as a basis for dividing the deposition process into intervals. The film growth was aborted at various k values yielding diamond film samples that represent snapshots of the growth process at different stages. These films were removed for ex situ characterization using Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). These characterizations were used to correlate the ellipsometric data with film microstructure, enabling us from now on to monitor the diamond film growth in real time and to design experiments targeted at modifying the film microstructure by changing growth parameters in the middle of film fabrication.
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