Site-selective plasma CVD based on catalytic nucleation enhancement: fabrication of micro-diamond arrays

A novel site-selective plasma CVD method has been developed on the basis of the catalytic enhanced nucleation of diamond on surfaces of the Pt group m etals. Even without substrate pretreatment by scratching with diamond powde r, the surfaces of these metals have shown diamond nucleation densities suf ficient to form continuous films. Our site-selective plasma CVD is based on the great difference in the nucleation densities between this high density Pt and low density SiO2 surfaces. We have applied this method to fabricati ng micro-diamond patterns in which CVD diamond were placed on predefined ar eas or positions with micrometer-scale accuracy. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.