Simulation-Based Development of a New Cylindrical-Cavity Microwave-Plasma Reactor for Diamond-Film Synthesis

A 2.45 GHz microwave-plasma chemical-vapor deposition (MPCVD) reactor was designed and built in-house by collaborating with Guangdong TrueOne Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. A cylindrical cavity was designed as the deposition chamber and a circumferential coaxial-mode transformer located at the t...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Qijun Wang, Gai Wu, Sheng Liu, Zhiyin Gan, Bo Yang, Junheng Pan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2019-06-01
Series:Crystals
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4352/9/6/320
Description
Summary:A 2.45 GHz microwave-plasma chemical-vapor deposition (MPCVD) reactor was designed and built in-house by collaborating with Guangdong TrueOne Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. A cylindrical cavity was designed as the deposition chamber and a circumferential coaxial-mode transformer located at the top of the cavity was adopted as the antenna. Two quartz-ring windows that were placed far away from the plasma and cooled by water-cooling cavity walls were used to affix the antenna to the cavity and act as a vacuum seal for the reactor, respectively. This design improved the sealing and protected the quartz windows. In addition, a numerical simulation was proposed to predict the electric-field and plasma-density distributions in the cavity. Based on the simulation results, a microwave-plasma reactor with TM<sub>021</sub> mode was built. The leak rate of this new reactor was tested to be as low as 1 &#215; 10<sup>&#8722;8</sup> Pa&#183;m<sup>3</sup>&#183;s<sup>&#8722;1</sup>, and the maximal microwave power was as high as 10 kW. Then, single-crystal diamond films were grown with the morphology and crystalline quality characterized by an optical microscope, atomic force microscope (AFM), Raman spectrometer, photoluminescence (PL) spectrometer, and high-resolution X-ray diffractometer. It was shown that the newly developed MPCVD reactor can produce diamond films with high quality and purity.
ISSN:2073-4352