Diamond CVD by a Combined Plasma Pretreatment and Seeding Procedure

A novel nucleation process (NNP), called the Rotter nucleation process in a recent review article, is described in detail in this paper. The NNP is based on the initial formation of a carbon film that, together with the diamond seeds on the surface (by standard seeding), plays an important role in the growth of the diamond layer. In the early stage, NNP induces a lateral growth mode that prevails until the initial grains coalesce and columnar growth begins. This method opens up new ways of using thin diamond films as encapsulation layers, and enables the formation of composite materials based on diamond.