Microwave engineering of plasma-assisted CVD reactors for diamond deposition

The unique properties of CVD diamond make it a compelling choice for high power electronics. In order to achieve industrial use of CVD diamond, one must simultaneously obtain an excellent control of the film purity, very low defect content and a sufficiently rapid growth rate. Currently, only microwave plasma-assisted chemical vapour deposition (MPACVD) processes making use of resonant cavity systems provide enough atomic hydrogen to satisfy these requirements. We show in this paper that the use of high microwave power density (MWPD) plasmas is necessary to promote atomic hydrogen concentrations that are high enough to ensure the deposition of high purity diamond films at large growth rates. Moreover, the deposition of homogeneous films on large surfaces calls for the production of plasma with appropriate shapes and large volumes. The production of such plasmas needs generating a fairly high electric field over extended regions and requires a careful design of the MW coupling system, especially the cavity. As far as MW coupling efficiency is concerned, the presence of a plasma load represents a mismatching perturbation to the cavity. This perturbation is especially important at high MWPD where the reflected fraction of the input power may be quite high. This mismatch can lead to a pronounced heating of the reactor walls. It must therefore be taken into account from the very beginning of the reactor design. This requires the implementation of plasma modelling tools coupled to detailed electromagnetic simulations. This is discussed in section 3. We also briefly discuss the operating principles of the main commercial plasma reactors before introducing the reactor design methodology we have developed. Modelling results for a new generation of reactors developed at LIMHP, working at very high power density, will be presented. Lastly, we show that scaling up this type of reactor to lower frequencies (915 MHz) can result in high density plasmas allowing for fast and homogeneous diamond deposition on up to 160 mm diameter surfaces.