In-situ monitoring of microwave plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition diamond growth on silicon using spectroscopic ellipsometry

• DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2022.10.049
• Publication Date: 2022-10-24T23:29:56Z
• Authors: William G.S. Leigh; Evan L.H. Thomas; Jerome A. Cuenca; Soumen Mandal; Oliver A. Williams
• Keywords: Coalescence (physics); Ellipsometry; Synthetic diamond

The quality of polycrystalline diamond films is heavily dependent on the nucleation and early stages growth, making ability to monitor these highly desirable. Spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) allows for real-time monitoring thickness, composition, morphology with sub-nanometre precision. In this work, ex-situ SE spectra were used develop an optical model film characterisation, which was then applied in-situ data. coalescence individual crystallites into a single observed through parabolic decrease in void content followed by peaks sp2 surface roughness. These observations validated using Raman AFM images samples grown durations between 5 30 min. also investigate impact varying methane concentration, finding that higher fraction resulted earlier peak content. This work demonstrates powerful tool optimisation critical growth.