MEASUREMENT OF THE ADHESION OF DIAMOND FILMS ON TUNGSTEN AND CORRELATIONS WITH PROCESSING PARAMETERS

Adhesion between diamond films and tungsten substrates is reported as a function of the deposition processing parameters. Diamond films were grown by a hot filament method as a function of seven different processing parameters: substrate scratching prior to diamond deposition, substrate temperature, methane content of the input gas mixture, filament temperature, filament-substrate distance, system pressure, and total gas flow rate. Adhesion was measured by using a Sebastian Five A tensile pull tester. Testing was complicated by the non-uniformity of the film thickness, diamond quality, film cohesion, and surface preparation across the full substrate surface area. Various types of film failure mode were observed, which did not correlate with the film processing parameters. The measured adhesion values showed larger variations from point to point across the sample surface and from identically prepared samples than variations as a function of the film processing parameters. Weak correlations of adhesion with the processing parameters were found using statistical analysis of the results from multiple pulls on a large number of samples. The statistical results suggest that substrate preparation, gas flow rate, and gas pressure are the most important processing parameters affecting the film adhesion, while the temperature of the hot filament has little or no effect on the adhesion of the film. However, improvements in firm processing and adhesion testing need to be made before true quantitative adhesion testing of high-quality diamond films can be accomplished.