Elucidation of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Diamond Film Growth
Abstract
A new probe of high-density plasmas has been developed. Supersonic pulse, plasma sampling mass spectrometry has been shown to be capable of obtaining a snapshot' of the chemical composition of a plasma. The technique is based on the release of a short pulse of noble gas into the near vacuum. As the pulse expands, the molecular and atomic species present in the plasma are swept into the rapidly expanding noble gas pulse. If the pulse is sufficiently dense, the gas mixture will supercool and condense with the plasma species acting as the nucleation sites for cluster formation. Contained within noble gas clusters, the plasma species are transported from the plasma chamber and to the detector with no significant chance of reaction or decomposition. This new method has provided strong evidence that the "growth species" for diamond is the vinyl radical (C2H3), and the chemistry of these plasmas has been shown to be parallel combustion chemistry. Application of this new method during the etching of silicon has provided the first mass spectrometric evidence for the highly dissociated chlorine, predicted by modeling. In addition, this method has been used to determine the direct etch products of Si, GaAs and AlN.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 28, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA364417
Entities
People
- Rik Blumenthal
Organizations
- Auburn University