High-resolution electron microscopy of diamond film growth defects and their interactions

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Abstract
High resolution electron microscopy of plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond films was performed. The film was fine-grained with a grain size of 0.1 micrometers . Several features of the microstructure were studied and their importance to the understanding of the diamond film growth was evaluated. The observations include: (1) Twinning density rises as a function of the distance from the center of the crystal. (2) The twins have an important role in the rapid growth of this kind of film The re-entrant angle between intersecting twins serves as a nucleation site for the growth of new (111) planes. (3) The center point of a twin quintuplet has five re-entrant angles and thus serves as a preferred nucleation site for new planes as the crystal grows. (4) Misfit boundaries, being the locus of intersection points of the growing planes on two adjacent twins, can serve as an indicator for the local crystal growth direction. The central nucleation site for the growing planes can thus, in many cases, be traced back to a quintuplet twin point.

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