Effect of ion beam nitriding on diamond nucleation and growth onto steel substrates

Ion beam nitriding was successfully employed to overcome the difficulty of diamond growth on ferrous base substrates. Commercial steels were pretreated by an ion beam method in an ambient environment of nitrogen gas, diamond was then deposited by hot filament chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The deposited films were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. Continuous diamond films with a sharp characteristic Raman peak of 1337.7 cm^-1 were grown and adhered well on the nitrided region of the steel substrates. On the other hand, a mixture of diamond crystallites, amorphous carbon and graphitic carbon was loosely deposited on the unnitrided region. A thin layer of iron and chromium nitrides, formed on the steel surface by ion beam nitriding, enabled the subsequent nucleation and growth of high-quality CVD diamond. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.