LARGE-AREA HIGH-SPEED DIAMOND DEPOSITION BY RF INDUCTION THERMAL PLASMA CHEMICAL VAPOR-DEPOSITION METHOD

By introducing methane as a sheath gas and by reducing the reactor chamber pressure to 150 Torr in an rf induction thermal plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method, a large volume of the thermal plasma was stabilized and elongated to reach far into the reactor chamber where a molybdenum substrate was placed. This made it possible to deposit diamond films uniformly on a substrate as large as 100 mm in diameter at a high deposition rate of 30 mum/h. This deposition area is the largest one of diamond films ever deposited by the rf induction thermal plasma CVD method.