Low temperature growth of nanocrystalline diamond: Insight thermal property

One of the limitations of materials for high-power devices and structural coatings applications is heat dissipation. Diamond is a suitable material for heat distribution due to its high thermal conductivity. Nevertheless, it is usually grown at high temperature (800–1200 °C), which limits its use as a coating for substrates vulnerable to degradation at high temperatures. In this work, it is studied the effect of the distance between the plasma source and substrate on the growth of nanocrystalline diamond layers on silicon substrates at low temperature (<450 °C) by microwave linear antenna plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (MW-LA-PECVD) in pulse mode. The nanocrystalline diamond films have been analysed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Raman spectroscopy. Finally, the superficial thermal conductivity of the diamond layers was determined by scanning thermal microscopy-AFM (SThM-AFM).