Vertical-Substrate MPCVD Epitaxial Nanodiamond Growth

Color center-containing nanodiamonds have many applications in quantum technologies and biology. Diamondoids, molecular-sized diamonds have been used as seeds in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth. However, optimizing growth conditions to produce high crystal quality nanodiamonds with color centers requires varying growth conditions that often leads to ad-hoc and time-consuming, one-at-a-time testing of reaction conditions. In order to rapidly explore parameter space, we developed a microwave plasma CVD technique using a vertical, rather than horizontally oriented stage-substrate geometry. With this configuration, temperature, plasma density, and atomic hydrogen density vary continuously along the vertical axis of the substrate. This variation allowed rapid identification of growth parameters that yield single crystal diamonds down to 10 nm in size and 75 nm diameter optically active center silicon-vacancy (Si-V) nanoparticles. Furthermore, this method may provide a means of incorporating a wide variety of dopants in nanodiamonds without ion irradiation damage.