Growth of twin-free heteroepitaxial diamond on Ir/YSZ/Si(111)

Heteroepitaxial nucleation and growth of twin-free diamond on Ir(111) is reported. The bias enhanced nucleation (BEN) technique was applied in a microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition setup to induce diamond nucleation on the new multilayer stack Ir/YSZ/Si(111). We demonstrate that the gathering of the diamond nuclei in so-called "domains," a pattern formation process unique for diamond nucleation on iridium, is also present on Ir(111). The 1-2 nm thick carbon layer deposited by BEN does not show any crystalline diamond structures in electron diffraction and high resolution lattice imaging microscopy. In contrast, x-ray photoelectron diffraction (XPD) measurements yield C 1s diffractograms with clear threefold symmetry. The main features are comparable to measurements on diamond (111) single crystal surfaces. The weaker fine structure in the XPD patterns of the BEN layers is attributed to some disorder due to the harsh ion bombardment. However, this ion bombardment did not induce any measurable amount of twinning as deduced from the threefold symmetry. After 3 h diamond growth, the signal due to twins in the x-ray diffraction pole figures is still below the noise level of similar to 1%. Negligible twinning and the low mosaic spread of 0.96 degrees (tilt) and 1.85 degrees (twist) indicate that these films mark a breakthrough toward heteroepitaxial diamond films with (111) orientation. They provide interesting growth substrates, e.g., for phosphorous doped diamond or for the formation of heterojunction devices by deposition of wurtzite-type wide band gap semiconductor materials.