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Why is iridium the best substrate for single crystal diamond growth?

  • extern
  • Université catholique de Louvain

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The synthesis of heteroepitaxial monocrystalline diamond films has been of technological and scientific interest for several decades. Using chemical vapor deposition techniques, polycrystalline diamond has been successfully grown on many substrates. However, iridium emerges in providing highly oriented films, significantly better than any other transition metals. In the present work we propose an ab initio density functional study of the interaction of diamond with different substrates used experimentally. The origin of iridium's specific behavior is investigated. The kinetics of carbon atoms in the substrate lattice is found to play a key role, determining the nucleation mechanisms and hence the quality of the final diamond film.

Original languageEnglish
Article number191917
Pages (from-to)1-3
Number of pages3
JournalApplied Physics Letters
Volume86
Issue number19
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 May 2005
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This research has been supported by the FRFC Project No. 2.4556.99, the ARC of the Communauté Française de Belgique, the Belgian Program on Inter-University Attraction Poles (PAI5∕1∕1), and the EU FAME (NMP3-CT-2004-500159), and NANOQUANTA (NMP4-CT-2004-500198) networks of excellence. J.C.C. acknowledges financial support from the FNRS.

FundersFunder number
Communauté Française de Belgique
EU FAMENMP3-CT-2004-500159
FRFC2.4556.99
NANOQUANTANMP4-CT-2004-500198
Australian Research Council
Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique - FNRS

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