Atomic-force-microscopic study of heteroepitaxial diamond nucleation on (100) silicon

Abstract

To understand the mechanism of heteroepitaxial diamond growth, the early stage of diamond nucleation, generated in a microwave plasma on negatively biased single crystalline (100) silicon substrates, was observed by atomic force microscopy. The results show that nonfacetted nuclei are initially formed whose size increases with deposition time. Reflection high energy electron diffraction reveals that the nuclei are of crystalline structure in spite of their very small height of about 5 nm. A critical radius of the nuclei r_c seems to exist under conditions applied in this study. The initial nuclei have a preferential (100) orientation. By a proper control of the nucleation and growth process, however, one can allow the epitaxially generated nuclei to reach r_c and to grow larger.