Diamond nucleation enhancement on reconstructed Si(100)

Diamonds have been efficiently nucleated on the flash-annealed and reconstructed silicon (100) substrate by hot filament chemical vapor deposition. A relatively high diamond nucleation density of about $1010 cm−2$ in the nucleation time of only 20 min was confirmed by a Raman peak at the wave number of $1332 cm−1$ and a scanning electron microscope image of the oriented nuclei with square-like shapes. The core-level spectra of $C1s$ and $Si2p$ using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicated that the diamond had been nucleated on the C-modified substrate believed to be a SiC layer. If so, this study demonstrates that the diamond can be efficiently nucleated on a high quality SiC surface.