Epitaxial diamond growth on sapphire in an oxidizing environment

摘要: Thin films of diamond are interest for technological applications such as hard coatings, heat sinks in electronic devices and miniaturized vacuum diodes1,2,3,4. They typically produced by chemical vapour deposition, the presence atomic hydrogen has been considered crucial growth crystals5,6,7,8,9. Some studies have claimed film a hydrogen-free environment10,11,12,13, but questions remained about conditions those cases. Here we report nucleation deposition hydrogen-free, pure oxygen environment to form crystals that heteroepitaxially aligned on single-crystal sapphire substrate. In other words, able achieve under where oxidative ‘etching’ carbon must compete with its deposition. By choosing temperature range results preferential oxidation non-diamond (graphitic) species diamond, accumulation diamond.