The morphology changes in diamond synthesized by hot-filament chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

Hot‐filament‐assisted chemical vapor deposition has been used to study the growth morphology of synthetic diamond deposited on silicon substrate in a dilute (1 vol %) CH₃COCH₃/H₂ at high substrate temperature (about 777 °C). Scanning electron microscope pictures of the diamond particles show that the surfaces of synthetic diamond consist of rough‐octahedral (111) faces and smooth‐cubic (100) faces, which is cubo‐octahedron. And also the (110) facets on the octahedral face are observed. The relative growth rate of (111) faces to that of (100) faces in the cubo‐octahedron is double that derived from the calculated specific surface energy. So the apparent growth rate of the octahedral face must be explained by the growths of two constituent crystallographic planes of (100) and (110). The observed roughness of (111) faces arises from the competing growths of (100) and (110) planes. The (110) faces separate the (111) faces into three (110) planes. For the study of diamond crystal growth during deposition, it is suggested that the growth mechanism of cubo‐octahedral diamond is the competing growths of (100) and (110) crystallographic planes.