STUDY OF THE INITIAL GROWTH-PHASE OF CHEMICAL-VAPOR-DEPOSITED DIAMONDON SILICON(001) BY SYNCHROTRON-RADIATION

Very thin diamond films (thickness similar to 0.1 mu m) have been inve stigated by x-ray diffraction pole figure measurements using synchrotr on radiation in order to understand the mechanism of heteroepitaxial d iamond nucleation and the first steps of film growth on silicon(001) s ubstrates. The diamond layers consist of an epitaxially aligned compon ent with a crystallographic orientation identical to the substrate. Th e initial orientational spread of the grains around the perfect epitax ial orientation prior to any modification by a subsequent textured gro wth step has been determined. In the studied temperature range for the nucleation step the misalignment decreases slightly with increasing t emperature. Besides the epitaxial crystallites their corresponding twi ns of first and second order have been found. The intensity distributi on of the pole figures indicates that the process of twinning plays a dominating role in the initial growth stage which shows a tendency to become even more pronounced for higher substrate temperatures. (C) 199 6 American Institute of Physics.