Near perfect heteroepitaxy of diamond islands on Si(III)

Abstract

Near perfect diamond island structures on Si(lll) are grown by microwave PECVD at low methane concentration and high substrate temperature. The (111) plane isolated diamond islands are well aligned on the substrate with the mosaic distribution of 0.03 FWHM, demonstrating a nearly perfect heteroepitaxy. The high strain in the isolated islands is relieved on contact with other islands, which implies that the strain relaxes by the formation of defects such as misfit dislocations; this is suggested to be the origin of the degradation of the diamond crystals with growth time.