Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
Diamond has been synthesised on copper using Microwave Plasma Chemical Vapour Deposition (MPCVD). The effect of substrate pre-treatment including different polishing and cleaning on diamond nucleation was investigated. It has been found that the residues from the polishing process played an important role in the diamond nucleation. Diamond films synthesised under optimised conditions presented a narrow 1332cm-1 Raman peak. During the ramp down procedure, diamond films usually cracked due to the large thermal mismatch between copper and diamond. To avoid this problem, the effect of growth temperature and deposition time was investigated and a two-step-growth method for stress relief is proposed.