DIAMOND HETEROEPITAXY USING NANOMETRIC SURFACE PREPARATION

One of the drawbacks of using single crystal diamond is the small size and expense of using natural diamond substrates. Single crystal natural diamonds are readily available in sizes up to 5 mm x 5 mm. For larger sizes the costs are prohibitive. These sizes are inconvenient to work with in terms of large scale fabrication of electronic devices. One solution to this problem is to be able to do diamond heteroepitaxy, i.e. grow single crystal diamond on alternate substrates. Another approach is to fabricate low coordination surfaces by using nanometric surface preparation. In this research program we propose the development of approaches for the heteroepitaxial growth of single crystals of diamond on metal substrates such as copper and molybdenum and on silicon using nanometric surface preparation.