Very Smooth Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film Growth by a Novel Pretreatment Technique

Very smooth ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) film growth on SiC substrate was achieved by a novel pretreatment technique consisted of SiC surface texturing and deaggregation of nanodiamond (ND) seed particles. Texturing of SiC surfaces in Ar and SF6/02 plasmas was found to be able to provide normalized roughness values of 0.5-7.0 compared to the untreated surface. SiC surface plasma-textured and seeded with H2 heat-treated ND particles at 600 degrees C showed the highest nucleation density of ~44.2 x 10(11) cm(-2) and a highly uniform coverage of surface with very fine ND seeds. The UNCD film grown with this new pretreatment technique showed a very smooth surface morphology consisted of small and uniformly distributed grains.