Modeling of the gas-phase chemistry in C-H-O gas mixtures for diamond Chemical Vapor Deposition.pdfVIP

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS VOLUME 89, NUMBER 9 1 MAY 2001 Modeling of the gas-phase chemistry in C–H–O gas mixtures for diamond chemical vapor deposition James R. Petherbridge, Paul W. May,a) and Michael N. R. Ashfold School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TS United Kingdom Received 21 November 2000; accepted for publication 8 February 2001 The boundaries of the diamond deposition region in the C–H–O Bachmann atomic phase composition diagram have been reproduced successfully for 38 different C, H, and O containing gas mixtures using the CHEMKIN computer package, together with just two criteria—a minimum mole fraction of methyl radicals CH and a limiting value of the H / C H ratio. The diamond 3 2 2 growth/no-growth boundary coincides with the line along which the input mole fractions of C and O are equal. For every gas mixture studied, no-growth regions are found to coincide with a negligible ( 1010) mole fraction of CH3 radicals, while for gas mixtures lying within the diamond growth region the CH3 mole fraction is 107 . Each no-growthdiamond growth boundary is seen to be accompanied by a 2–3 order of magnitude step in CH3 mole fraction. The boundary between diamond and nondiamond growth is less clearly defined, but can be reproduced by assuming a critical, temperature dependent H / C H ratio 0.2, in the case that T 2000 K that 2 2 gas reflects the crucial role of H atoms in the etching of nondiamond pha