Electrical properties and physical characteristics of polycrystalline diamond films deposited in a microwave plasma disk reactor

This work experimentally investigates techniques for high quality diamond synthesis and develops means for electrical and physical characterization of the films. The films are deposited by plasma assisted chemical vapor deposition using a methane/hydrogen plasma in a microwave plasma disk reactor system.;For powder polished films, all metallic contacts were ohmic. These samples were used to explore the high electric field properties of diamond. It was discovered that for fields larger than approximately 1 ;Non-ohmic, Schottky barrier contacts were achievable on the past polished films. For Al/diamond/silicon structures diode characteristics were observed. These I-V characteristics were modeled as an ideal Schottky barrier diode in series with bulk diamond, for which the property of the bulk diamond follows an ;Both a diamond past nucleation method and a diamond powder nucleation method are studied in this research. Although as indicated by Raman spectroscopy both methods produced similar quality diamond films, the powder nucleation method produced fine grain, sub-micron sized crystallite, films whereas the past nucleation method produced large grain, several-micrometer size crystallite, films.