Abstract:The effect of silicon doping on the residual stress of CVD diamond films is examined using both X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and Raman spectroscopy measurements. The examined Si-doped diamond films are deposited on WC-Co substrates in a home-made bias-enhanced HFCVD apparatus. Ethyl silicate (Si(OC₂H₅)₄) is dissolved in acetone to obtain various Si/C mole ratio ranging from 0.1% to 1.4% in the reaction gas. Characterizations with SEM and XRD indicate increasing silicon concentration may result in grain size decreasing and diamond [110] texture becoming dominant. The residual stress values of as-deposited Si-doped diamond films are evaluated by both sin²ψ method, which measures the (220) diamond Bragg diffraction peaks using XRD, with ψ-values ranging from 0° to 45°, and Raman spectroscopy, which detects the diamond Raman peak shift from the natural diamond line at 1332 cm^-1. The residual stress evolution on the silicon doping level estimated from the above two methods presents rather good agreements, exhibiting that all deposited Si-doped diamond films present compressive stress and the sample with Si/C mole ratio of 0.1% possesses the largest residual stress of ~1.75 GPa (Raman) or ~2.3 GPa (XRD). As the silicon doping level is up further, the residual stress reduces to a relative stable value around 1.3 GPa.

Key words: silicon-doped diamond films; silicon doping; residual stress; X-ray diffraction; Raman spectroscopy