The influence of the growth process on the film texture of epitaxially nucleated diamond on silicon (001)

Abstract

Abstract In order to investigate the influence of the growth process on the film texture, a set of epitaxially nucleated diamond films has been grown by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) on silicon(001) with final film thicknesses ranging from 0.6 μm up to 37 μm. Measurements of X-ray diffraction pole figures of these films show that the film texture could be improved by an appropriate growth step which results in the overgrowth of twins and in the narrowing of the pole density maxima of the epitaxial component with increasing film thickness. Starting from the polar and azimuthal widths of the pole density maxima in the {111} pole figures, we deduced the tilt and rotational misorientation of the grains quantitatively. This decomposition procedure is essentially based on the assumption that rotation and tilt are independent processes. The thickness dependence of the amount of rotational misorientation deduced according to this model is in agreement with this assumption. (111) pole figures which have been simulated using this model fit very well to the measured form of the pole density distributions.