The effect of growth rate control on the morphology of nanocrystalline diamond

In this paper, we report an effective means to grow nanocrystalline diamond films by increasing the nucleation rate and decreasing the growth rate through the adjustment of the CVD process parameters. Nanodiamond films with grain size as small as 5-10 nm by CH4/H2/N2 Microwave Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (MPECVD) and 10-20 nm by CH4/H2 MPECVD have been achieved with this technique. Utilizing the extremely small grain size of the nanodiamond films, we apply a novel nano-mold transferring technique facilitated by Focused Ion Beam (FIB) to fabricate high aspect-ratio diamond nano-tips for enhanced electron field emission.