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With its excellent properties such as high thermal conductivity, strong radiation resistance and high electron mobility, diamond has become one of the most suitable materials for radiation detectors. Detector-grade diamond requires low impurity content, low dislocation density and other defects. However, it is very difficult to keep low impurities and low dislocations simultaneously in the actual crystal growth process. In this study, microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) method was used to grow diamond layer on two high-quality HPHT diamond substrates with the previously optimized process conditions. The nitrogen impurity content and structure of the HPHT substrate and growth layer were characterized and analyzed. The results show that, the content of nitrogen impurity on two HPHT substrates are 7. 1 x 10-6% and 4. 04 x 10-8%, respectively, whereas in their epitaxial diamond layers, the nitrogen impurity content are 2. 1 x 10-7% and 5 x 10-8%, respectively. The full width at half-maximum of the rocking curve shows that the dislocation density of the MPCVD growth layer is comparable to the HPHT substrate, though some dislocations were introduced into the MPCVD growth layer, which increases the stress. Overall, the dislocations in the HPHT substrate and epitaxial layer of single crystal diamond are in the same order of magnitude. The high-purity single crystal diamond prepared in this work may be used in nuclear radiation detection and semiconductor fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is critical in water splitting for green hydrogen gas production due to its sluggish kinetics; however, commercial OER catalysts commonly suffer from high cost, low catalytic activity and poor stability. Herein, we developed a C+ ion implantation method to modify single crystal diamond, and the resultant surface amorphous layer not only raised the active site number but also increased the content of the C=O group, thus significantly improving the OER activity. The C+ ion implanted high-temperature and high-pressure (C+-HTHP) and chemical vapor deposition (C+-CVD) diamonds both exhibit low OER overpotential with η 10 of 317 mV and 325 mV respectively, superior to those of HTHP diamond (360 mV), CVD diamond (395 mV) and RuO 2 (364 mV). The potentiostatic testing shows that the C+ implanted diamonds almost didn't undergo the rise of OER overpotential upon catalysis for more than 12 h at a current density of 10 mA cm−2, suggesting a high catalytic stability, owing to the strong bonding between single crystal diamond and amorphous carbon layer. For the first time, we utilized carbon ion implantation to prepare diamond-based high-performance OER catalyst, which broadens the understanding of carbon-based materials in OER catalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand of small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) windows for in-situ characterization of materials nano-structures in a heated vacuum environment has been increased dramatically. High-quality diamond prepared by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has become the preferred window material due to its excellent optical and mechanical properties. However, impurities and defects in diamonds may lead to the strong X-ray scattering especially in the heating process, affecting the testing accuracy of the object. In this work, single-crystal diamond (SCD) and polycrystalline diamond (PCD) films with different quality were prepared, and their SAXS properties were investigated at room temperature and heating under vacuum. The results show that the scattering intensity of the undoped high-quality SCD is small and uniform, while that of the SCD window doped with a small amount of nitrogen increases, mainly due to the nitrogen atoms and vacancy clusters scattering. While for the PCDs, the grain boundaries and the dark features lead to strong scattering background. As the temperature rises from room temperature to 280 °C, although the phonon vibration of diamonds exhibits the obvious temperature dependence, the coherent scattering of diamonds with X-ray hardly changes, indicating no new scatterers with the changed gyration radius were generated in the heating process. SCD and PCD windows were successfully applied in an in-situ heating SAXS cell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pure oxygen was introduced into the growth environment of the single crystal diamond with different contents, and the growth characteristics of single crystal diamond and the reaction dynamics in the plasma were studied in detail. As the ratio of O 2 to H 2 is up to 1.5%, the unique shaped etching pits with eight symmetric crystallographic planes appear. Optical emission spectra present typical characteristic radicals in the O 2 incorporated growth environment. With amount of O 2 increases, the growth rate decreases gradually due to the low active carbon source concentration and electron temperature. In the carbon contained hydrogen plasma, O 2 will react with CH radicals preferentially at low concentration and the dynamic equilibrium of CH and C 2 radicals was achieved at the O 2 concentration of 0.5% and 1%. Accompanying with the O 2 addition, the nitrogen and silicon related impurities have been reduced during the epitaxial growth process. Meanwhile, all of the FWHM of characteristic peaks in Raman decrease obviously after the epitaxial growth without and with O 2 addition, and FWHM of most samples are about 2.6 cm −1 , which are comparable with the natural type IIa SCD without stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Single‐crystal diamonds are successfully synthesized using microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition. A smooth and flat single‐crystal surface is obtained by optimizing the size relationship between the seed substrate and the square hole of the shielding ring. When the sample grows higher than the polycrystalline diamond on the molybdenum holder, the surface becomes uneven. The polarization characteristics of two kinds of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) layers are compared between flat and uneven surfaces. Abnormal high‐order birefringence occurs in both morphologies, which is related to the dislocation density in the CVD layers. The higher the dislocation density of the sample, the more obvious the high‐order anomalous birefringence. High‐pressure high‐temperature seed substrates have obvious defects, such as dislocations, stacking faults, and boundaries of the growth sector, and these defects are mostly distributed at the edge of seed substrates. When the diamond surface demonstrates an edge‐to‐center morphology, the dislocations in the seed substrate, interface‐induced dislocations, and dislocations formed in the growth layer begin to converge toward the central region of the CVD layer, which results in a smaller area of low stress in the center of the CVD layer. High dislocation density causes the crystal to have a mosaic structure and orientation deviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) was used to grow single-crystal diamonds on two types of single-crystal diamond seed substrates prepared by high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) methods. The quality of diamonds grown on the different seed substrates was compared. Fluorescence characteristics showed that the sectors of the HPHT seed substrates were obviously partitioned. Raman and absorption spectra showed that the CVD seed substrate produced higher-quality crystals with fewer nitrogen impurities. X-ray topography showed that the HPHT seed substrate had obvious growth sector boundaries, inclusions, dislocations, and stacking faults. The polarization characteristics of HPHT seed substrate were obvious, and the stress distribution was not uniform. When etching HPHT and CVD seed substrates using the same parameters, the etching morphology and extent of different growth sectors of the two substrates differed. Although extended defects were inevitably formed at the interface and propagated in the CVD layer, the dislocation density of a 1 mm-thick CVD layer grown on a CVD seed substrate was only half that of a 1 mm-thick CVD layer grown on an HPHT seed substrate. Therefore, the use of CVD seed substrate enabled the growth of a relatively higher-quality CVD single-crystal diamond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diamond radiation detector is an ideal choice for the next-generation radiation detection in harsh environments, due to its small size, high irradiation resistance and fast response. However, high-purity single crystal diamond is hard to be prepared at the high growth rate due to the inevitable impurity incorporation. In this paper, based on the high-quality high-temperature/high-pressure (HPHT) single crystal diamond substrate, detector-grade single crystal diamonds material with high purity and low defect density were epitaxially grown at growth rate of about 4 μm/h by using plasma environment purification technology. It showed that the full width at half maximum of X-ray rocking curve of high-quality single crystal diamond could reach 0.007°, there was no nitrogen related impurity in PL spectrum, and the substitutional nitrogen content estimated by UV absorption spectrum was less than 10 ppb. After metallization and packaging process, the diamond detectors were prepared and the detector response under irradiation with 241Am α-particles was realized. For the sample with fewer dislocations, the charge collection efficiency and energy resolution of this detector were 86.8 % and 7.85 % for electrons, and 96.7 % and 2.48 % for holes. The product of mobility and lifetime of electrons and holes were 1.7 × 10−4 cm2V−1 and 3.7 × 10−4 cm2V−1, respectively. The high performances of the detector indicate that the current diamond detector can meet the application requirements of commercial diamond detectors. [Display omitted] • Detector-grade diamond was prepared by plasma environment purification technology. • The high-purity single crystal diamond was grown at growth rate of about 4 μm/h. • The diamond detector with charge collection efficiency of 96.7 % was realized. • The products of mobility and lifetime of electrons and holes were 1.7 × 10−4 and 3.7 × 10−4 cm2V−1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface etching of single-crystal diamond (SCD) in hydrogen plasma plays a decisive role for high-quality homoepitaxy and surface conduction of diamond. The complexity of surface/subsurface condition such as defects would give rise to the distinct morphology features and even further result in the unpredictable properties. Correspondingly, the evolutionary relationship between the morphology and electrical properties of mechanically polished SCDs which have typical cleavage damage in microns depth after hydrogen plasma treatment still needs to be further completed. In this work, the chemical vapor deposited (CVD) SCDs with uniform polishing-caused subsurface cleavage were immersed in microwave hydrogen plasma for variable duration. Time-dependent morphological evolution, multi-mode etched pits (EPs) (resulting from local defects/cracks and dislocations) and associated etching mechanism were comprehensively studied. At the early stage of plasma treatment before 60 min, owing to the obvious surface roughing generated by preferential etching (with the rate of >400 nm/h) of severe mechanically damaged regions, the hole mobility was significantly deteriorated, also accompanying with the apparent drop of sheet concentration. Concurrently, the deposited surface sp 2 amorphous carbon (a -C) nanodots on diamond surface and non- sp 3 hydrogen bonds reconstruction, which arising from defect-etching produced local abundant carbon-containing radicals or possible exfoliation generated by hydrogen penetration of massive defective regions, also would play an adverse role for the conduction associated with (100) C–H surface. However, the surface roughness was reduced from the maximum 13.2 nm–4.2 nm by prolonging etching, resulting from the smoothing effect of small-angle crystal misorientation on waved height difference related to the uniform (111) cleavage and the removal of dense irregular EPs associated with polishing-induced local defects as well as the vanishing of surface a -C nanodots. In this case, the improvement of surface electrical properties together with the negative correlation of the mobility and sheet concentration were appeared by the gradual formation of (100) diamond surface and the building of uniform (100) C–H bonds. • CVD SCDs with typical subsurface damages(defects) were treated in pure hydrogen plasma. • Morphology evolution associated with polishing defects was time-dependently presented. • Surface sp2 nanodots deposition from defect-etching and CH reconstruction would affect electrical properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present investigation, a nitrogen-doped multilayer homoepitaxial single crystal diamond is synthesized on a high-pressure high temperature (HPHT) Ib-type diamond substrate using the microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) method. When 0.15 sccm of nitrogen was added in the gas phase, the growth rate of the doped layer was about 1.7 times that of the buffer layer, and large conical and pyramidal features are formed on the surface of the sample. Raman mapping and photoluminescence imaging of the polished cross sectional slice shows a broadband emission, with a characteristic zero phonon line (ZPL) at 575 nm in the doped layers, and large compressive stress was formed in the nitrogen-doped layers. X-ray topography shows that the defects at the interface can induce dislocation. The pyramid feature is formed at the defect, and more nitrogen-related defects are formed in the pyramid region. Thin nitrogen-doped multilayers were successfully prepared, and the thickness of the nitrogen-doped and buffer layers was about 650 nm each. The indentation measurements reveal that the thin nitrogen-doped multilayers are ultra-tough (at least ~22 MPa m1/2), compared to the Ib-type HPHT seed substrate (~8 MPa m1/2) and the unintentionally doped chemical vapor deposition (CVD) single crystal diamond (~14 MPa m1/2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]