Plasma-Enhanced Diamond Nucleation on Si

Abstract
Both positive and negative bias effects on the nucleation of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond have been investigated thoroughly in microwave plasma. Prior to the conventional microwave plasma CVD growth of diamond, positive or negative biasing pretreatment has been performed. The pretreatment conditions were varied in terms of substrate bias voltage ( -100∼+100 V), pretreatment pressure ( 0.2∼15 Torr), and methane fraction ( 2∼40%) in hydrogen source gas. It is found that the positive substrate bias as well as the negative bias are effective for the nucleation of diamond.