Heteroepitaxial and textured growth of diamond thin films

In the present paper two methods are presented allowing the preparation of diamond films, in which the crystallites have lost one, two and three degrees of freedom, resp. By an appropriate control of the growth process diamond films with fiber texture can be fabricated, in which <l00> axes of individual crystals are restricted to make a given angle with the film normal, which in a perfectly textured film is zero (loss of one and two degrees of freedom, resp.). Three degrees of orientational freedom are lost in epitaxial and heteroepitaxial films, in which the regularity of a substrate lattice imposes a complete or nearly complete orientation onto the (nuclei of the) growing film. As far as epitaxial growth is concerned, the present article will essentially represent a description of the present status of knowledge about the heteroepitaxy on silicon, owing to the authors field of interest and the application potential of the technique.