Physical and Thermal Characterization of CVD Diamond: A Bottoms-up Review

The control of diamond nucleation and the early stages of diamond growth are essential for control of the diamond properties that are sensitive to or directly depend on the film anisotropy, grain size, and microscopic voids in the film. This phenomenon particularly affects the thermal conductivity of thin diamond films. Measuring the thermal conductivity/thermal diffusivity of material like diamond is extremely challenging. In this study we relied of four techniques to evaluate and measure the thermal conductivity of diamond. These included, Laser-Flash Diffusivity, Heated Bar technique, FTIR and FDTR. In combining thermal conductivity measurement techniques with AFM, SEM and TEM review of the near interface, a better insight into the evolution of thermal conductivity from the nucleation surface to bulk has been developed and the results are presented.