Three-dimensional simulation of CVD diamond film growth

As often reported in the case of CVD diamond synthesis, the elaboration conditions strongly affect the quality of the deposit in terms of roughness, grain boundary quantity, structural defect density or non diamond phase insertion. It is recognised that this quality mainly depends 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 computer simulation of diamond growth. This numerical model is based on the homothetic growth of single diamond crystals in an Euclidean space and the selection of the enveloping surface obtained after the crystal interpenetration. By this way and in the limit of the exposed hypotheses, it is possible to build the topographies and to simulate its theoretical evolutions in the case of textured films synthesised on scratched silicon wafers according to the growth conditions such as the nucleation density, the growth rate ratio alpha = root 3(V-100/V-111) or the synthesis time. We have particularly studied the ratio R{hkl} = (S-{100}/S{(100}) + S-{111} of the topography according to the synthesis time, in order to follow the evolution of surface morphology.