Diamond film orientation by ion bombardment during deposition

The influence of ion bombardment during microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on diamond film orientation has been investigated. Two interesting findings were obtained: (1) The [001] axes of the grown diamond grains are always along the ion flow direction, perpendicular to the substrate and independent of the crystal orientation of the substrates and (2) for the crystallites which are homoepitaxially grown on the (001) diamond faces parallel to the substrate slight misorientations were found. These new findings confirm the role of ion impact in diamond CVD and can help us to understand the basic mechanism responsible for the crystal orientation in heteroepitaxial diamond films prepared using bias-enhanced nucleation.