Diamond growth on the high purity iron substrate using hot-filament CVD method

The mechanism of diamond growth and subsequent film deposition on semiconductor materials has been partially clarified. However, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond growth on most metals is not understood because of insufficient experimentation. It is especially very difficult to fabricate CVD diamond on iron-based materials due to the rapid diffusion coefficient of carbon species. Synthetic diamond on iron-based materials is extremely important for mechanical and electrical applications because these materials are widely used in the industrial field. In this research, the diamond growth was carried out on pure iron with a purity of 99.999% and irons with a purity of 99.99% and 99% were used as reference substrates. The diamond film with excellent crystalline quality was achieved using the high purity iron substrate. Cross-sectional SEM images have confirmed film growth in columnar structure, as the diamond films of silicon substrates. Moreover, the differing substrate conditions before and after diamond deposition were clearly observed by XPS analysis and electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) mappings. The result of analysis suggested that the substrate conditions directly correlate to the differences in the three samples.