Investigating the role of hydrogen in ultra-nanocrystalline diamond thin film growth

Hydrogen has long been known to be critical for the growth of high-quality microcrystalline diamond thin films as well as homoepitaxial single-crystal diamond. A hydrogen-poor growth process that results in ultra-nanocrystalline diamond thin films has also been developed, and it has been theorized that diamond growth with this gas chemistry can occur in the absence of hydrogen. This study investigates the role of hydrogen in the growth of ultra-nanocrystalline diamond thin films in two different regimes. First, we add hydrogen to the gas phase during growth, and observe that there seems to be a competitive growth process occurring between microcrystalline diamond and ultra-nanocrystalline diamond, rather than a simple increase in the grain size of ultra-nanocrystalline diamond. Second, we remove hydrogen from the plasma by changing the hydrocarbon precursor from methane to acetylene and observe that there does seem to be some sort of lower limit to the amount of hydrogen that can sustain ultra-nanocrystalline diamond growth. We speculate that this is due to the amount of hydrogen needed to stabilize the surface of the growing diamond nanocrystals.