3-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATION OF CVD DIAMOND FILM GROWTH

As often reported in the case of CVD diamond synthesis, the elaboratio n conditions strongly affect the quality of the deposit in terms of ro ughness, grain boundary quantity, structural defect density or non dia mond phase insertion. It is recognised that this quality mainly depend s of the texture evolution. To our knowledge, numerical simulations of this growth model that allow the diamond film quality to be predicted do not exist. In this way, we have developed a three-dimensional comp uter simulation of diamond growth. This numerical model is based on th e homothetic growth of single diamond crystals in an Euclidean space a nd the selection of the enveloping surface obtained after the crystal interpenetration. By this way and in the limit of the exposed hypothes es, it is possible to build the topographies and to simulate its theor etical evolutions in the case of textured films synthesised on scratch ed silicon wafers according to the growth conditions such as the nucle ation density, the growth rate ratio alpha = root 3(V-100/V-111) or th e synthesis time. We have particularly studied the ratio R{hkl} = (S-{ 100}/S{(100}) + S-{111} of the topography according to the synthesis t ime, in order to follow the evolution of surface morphology.