FULLERENES AS PRECURSORS FOR DIAMOND FILM GROWTH WITHOUT HYDROGEN OR OXYGEN ADDITIONS

Diamond films are predominantly grown using approximately 1% of a hydr ocarbon precursor in hydrogen gas. Hydrogen is generally believed to b e necessary for the diamond thin-film growth process. However, hydroge n in varying amounts is inevitably incorporated in the growing diamond lattice, leading to structural defects. We report here the successful growth of diamond films using fullerene precursors in an argon microw ave plasma, a unique development achieved without the addition of hydr ogen or oxygen. We speculate that collisional fragmentation of C60 to give C2 could be responsible for the high growth rate of the very-fine -grained diamond films.