A comparative study of the effects of reactor geometry on the quality of CVD diamond films deposited on silicon substrates with mixture of CH4/H2 gas flow

This paper investigates the quantifiable effects of reactor geometry on the quality of CVD diamond films. This detailed experimental study includes two types of reactor geometries: the 5 in. quartz dome with 3 in. substrate reactor and the 4 in. quartz dome with 2 in. substrate reactor geometry. More specifically, a comparison between the output variables of both reactor geometries is examined and a complete analysis is presented. The reactor output variables include film morphology, structural quality as measured by Raman spectra and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques, linear growth rate, carbon conversion efficiency, and specific yield. The study shows the impact of variation in the reactor geometry is significant on film morphology, particularly at low temperatures, weight gain, and carbon conversion efficiency. On the other hand, FWHM, linear growth rate, and normalized carbon conversion efficiency are not significantly affected by the reactor geometry.