Effect Of The Substrate Crystalline Orientation On The Surface Morphology And Boron Incorporation Into Epitaxial Diamond Layers

Epitaxial growth of diamond is critically important for the fabrication of diamond-based electronic devices. The emerging study of the epitaxial diamond growth on the (113) vicinal surfaces evidences highly needed high growth rates and low structural defects concentrations with both p- and n-type doping. In this work, we compare the morphology and dopant concentration incorporation of heavily boron-doped (113) epitaxial diamond layers with conventionally studied (100) and (111) epitaxial layers. Epitaxial layers were grown using resonance cavity Microwave Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (MWPECVD) system. The surface morphology of epitaxial layers was studied by optical microscopy and atomic force microscopy, whereas the boron incorporation homogeneity was determined by Raman spectroscopy mapping. Heavily boron-doped (113) epitaxial diamond layers can be grown at a high growth rate with a smooth surface, without pyramidal hillocks or non-epitaxial crystallite defects, and with homogeneous boron concentration. These results confirm that epitaxial diamond growth on (113) vicinal surfaces is a promising solution for the development and fabrication of diamond-based electronic devices.