| Diamond has many unrivaled properties and has great application potentials in modern industry. Among various metastable chemical vapor deposition methods for producing diamond, thermal plasma chemical vapor deposition has shown advantages of offering high growth rates and high quality. However, systematic parametric studies are needed for optimization of the process. This study investigates the effects of substrate materials, substrate temperatures, substrate pre-treatment methods, precursor concentrations, and process pressures on the initial nucleation, growth rate, morphology, and quality of the diamond films under thermal plasma conditions. X-ray diffraction, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy have been used for the diamond film characterization.;Thermal plasmas have been also used to deposit homoepitaxial diamond films at high growth rates. High quality macro-sized diamond crystals have been grown on ;The gas phase chemistry has been calculated using computer code SOLGASMIX to determine the equilibrium gaseous composition in thermal plasmas. Key species concentrations have been obtained under various pressure conditions. Although kinetic factors have not been taken into account, equilibrium conditions offer an estimation of the process justified by the "frozen chemistry" associated with the fast quenching in the boundary layer.;Due to the strong emission of the highly luminous plasma plumes, it has been difficult to measure the in-situ substrate temperature distribution with conventional infrared optical pyrometers. A new technique has been developed to obtain the surface temperature distribution of the substrate by combining the experimental temperature measurements of an array of thermocouples imbedded in the substrate and analytical solutions of the two-dimensional heat conduction equation. This method enables an indirect determination of the substrate temperature distribution. |
