With the advantages of high deposition rate and large deposition area, polycrystalline diamond films prepared by direct current （DC） arc jet chemical vapor deposition （CVD） are considered to be one of the most promising materials for high-frequency and high-power electronic devices. In this paper, high-quality self-standing polycrystalline diamond films with the diameter of 100 mm were prepared by DC arc jet CVD, and then, the p-type surface conductive layer with the sheet carrier density of 10^11-10^13 cm-2 on the H-terminated diamond film was obtained by micro-wave hydrogen plasma treatment for 40 min. Ti/Au and Au films were deposited on the H-terminated diamond surface as the ohmic contact electrode, respectively, afterwards, they were treated by rapid vacuum annealing at different temperatures. The properties of these two types of ohmic contacts were investigated by measuring the specific contact resistance using the transmission line method （TLM）. Due to the formation of Ti-related carbide at high temperature, the specific contact resistance of Ti/Au contact gradually decreases to 9.95 × 10^-5 Ω-cm2 as the temperature increases to 820℃. However, when the annealing temperature reaches 850℃, the ohmic contact for Ti/Au is degraded significantly due to the strong diffusion and reaction between Ti and Au. As for the as-deposited Au contact, it shows an ohmic contact. After annealing treatment at 550℃, low specific contact resistance was detected for Au contact, which is derived from the enhancement of interdiffusion between Au and diamond films.
The effect of the substrate holder feature dimensions on plasma density（ne）, power density（Qmw） and gas temperature（T） of a discharge marginal plasma（a plasma caused by marginal discharge） and homogeneous plasma were investigated for the microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition process. Our simulations show that decreasing the dimensions of the substrate holder in a radical direction and increasing its dimension in the direction of the axis helps to produce marginally inhomogeneous plasma. When the marginal discharge appears, the maximum plasma density and power density appear at the edge of the substrate. The gas temperature increases until a marginally inhomogeneous plasma develops. The marginally inhomogeneous plasma can be avoided using a movable substrate holder that can tune the plasma density, power density and gas temperature. It can also ensure that the power density and electron density are as high as possible with uniform distribution of plasma. Moreover, both inhomogeneous and homogeneous diamond films were prepared using a new substrate holder with a diameter of 30 mm. The observation of inhomogeneous diamond films indicates that the marginal discharge can limit the deposition rate in the central part of the diamond film. The successfully produced homogeneous diamond films show that by using a substrate holder it is possible to deposit diamond film at 7.2 μm h^（–1）at 2.5 kW microwave power.
A free-standing diamond film with millimeter thickness prepared by DC arc plasma jet was thinned successively by mechanical grinding. The orientation and quality of the diamond films with different thicknesses were characterized by X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy, respectively. The results show a random grain-orientatinn distribution during the initial growth stage. As the film thickness increases, the preferred orientation of the diamond film changes from （111） to （220）, due to the competitive growth mechanism. Twinning generated during the nucleation stage appears to stabilize the preferential growth along the 〈110〉 direction. The interplanar spacing of the （220） plane is enlarged as the film thickness increases, which is caused by the increase of non-diamond-phase carbon and impurities under the cyclic gas. In addition, the quality of the diamond film is barely degraded during the growth process. Furthermore, the peak shift demonstrates a significant inhomogeneity of stress along the film growth direction, which results from competitive growth.
Xing-kai WenJun-jun WeiJin-long LiuJian-chao GuoLiang-xian ChenCheng-ming Li
Radio frequency(RF) reactive magnetron sputtering was utilized to deposit Li-doped and undoped zinc oxide(Zn O) films on silicon wafers. Various Ar/O2 gas ratios by volume and sputtering powers were selected for each deposition process. The results demonstrate that the enhanced Zn O films are obtained via Li doping. The average deposition rate for doped Zn O films is twice more than that of the undoped films. Both atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy studies indicate that Li doping significantly contributes to the higher degree of crystallinity of wurtzite–Zn O. X-ray diffraction analysis demonstrates that Li doping promotes the(002) preferential orientation in Li-doped Zn O films. However, an increase in the Zn O lattice constant, broadening of the(002) peak and a decrease in the peak integral area are observed in some Li-doped samples, especially as the form of Li2 O. This implies that doping with Li expands the crystal structure and thus induces the additional strain in the crystal lattice. The oriented-growth Li-doped Zn O will make significant applications in future surface acoustic wave devices.
