Investigation of depositing large area uniform diamond films in multi-mode MPCVD chamber

In this work, diamond films were deposited in a 10 kW, 2450 MHz MPCVD apparatus, of which the chamber allows a multi-mode microwave electric field to be overlapped and high microwave power to be employed. The two primary modes of TM01 and TM02 overlap around the substrate and generate a large scale plasma ball which ensures the deposition of large area diamond films. The deposition temperature across the substrate was primarily investigated in order to deposit uniform diamond films in the multi-mode chamber. And the optical emission spectra, scanning electron microscope and Raman were used to characterize the diamond films. The results showed that higher microwave power should be selected to generate large plasma ball and obtain needed temperature uniformity for a given deposition pressure. And the temperature variation was decreased obviously when the substrate holder was improved. With the optimized parameter and the improved stage configuration, the diamond thin films deposited on phi = 80 mm silicon wafers obtained excellent uniformity in morphology, thickness and quality. And the results of investigating growth rate further confirm that the improved substrate holder and the employment of high microwave power are useful to achieve uniform diamond films with large area and high deposition rate. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.