Diamond synthesis by chemical vapor deposition: The early years

In the two decades following World War II there was a great surge in interest in high-pressure diamond synthesis, especially in Sweden, the United States and the Soviet Union. It is less well known that during this time major efforts were also made in low-pressure, metastable growth of diamond. All of these efforts, both high and low pressure, were characterized by great secrecy and a considerable lack of transparency. General Electric made the first public announcement of successful high pressure-high temperature diamond synthesis in 1955. The first reports of low-pressure diamond syntheses in the open literature were in 1962 (Eversole; Union Carbide Corporation) in 1968 (Angus et al.; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, and also in 1968 (Deryagin et al.; Physical Chemistry Institute, Moscow). In addition to skepticism about the veracity of these claims, a common view was that even if true, growth rates would always be far too slow to be of interest. Also, the apparent violation of thermodynamic laws was a continuing theme by many (but not all) during this time period. These attitudes changed dramatically in the early 1980s when the National Institute for Research in Inorganic Materials (NIRIM) in Japan (Kamo, Matsumoto, Sato, Setaka) announced diamond growth rates in the micron per hour range. The role of hydrogen in diamond synthesis was suggested in 1966 by Lander and Morrison at Bell Labs. An understanding of the critical role of atomic hydrogen grew incrementally, through sequential growth-cleaning cycles (Angus, Gardner) and culminating in its using during growth by the Moscow group (Deryagin, Fedoseev, Polanskaya, Spitsyn, Varnin, et al.). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.