Investigation on reactive ion etching CVD diamond Film

Abstract

Diamond, having many advanced physical and mechanical properties, is one of the most important materials used in the mechanical, telecommunication and optoelectronic industry. It has played an important role for being advanced materials of MEMS devices. In this present study, reactive ion etching (RIE) polycrystalline CVD diamond film was conducted. The etching gases such as O2, O2 / CF4, and O2 / SF6 were used in the RIE experiments. Experimental results showed that using O2 can obtained rough etched surface where have uniform and densely sub-micro pillar-like structure formed on the diamond grains. From the Raman spectra analysis and TEM micrographs showed that the etched diamond film surfaces were transformed into graphite and amorphous carbon. In addition to the atmospheric pressure air plasma (APAP) pretreatment was also conducted before RIE process. Using the APAP process seems can help to obtain some cauliflower-like and sub-micro cone-like structures on the RIEed/O2 surface. Although RIEed and APAP/RIEed diamond films exhibited similar surface modified layer, their surface morphologies showed very different.