Technical & Industrial Perspective:

Manufacturing Process:

• The ultra-nanocrystalline diamond (UNCD) thin film is initially deposited in methane (CH4) & hydrogen (H2) atmosphere where CH4/H2 is 4.5% in the absence of Ar at a pressure of 7 Torr and substrate temperature of 800°C.
• Post deposition, the films are implanted with phosphorus ions with energy 100 keV & beam current 1 µA. (Refer Fig.2).
• Annealing is performed in vacuum at high temperature to ensure the mobility of vacancies/point defects and to restore the crystallinity.
• Annealing helps in recovering from amorphization & helps in getting rid of implantation induced defects.
• Using a systematic variation of phosphorus doses implanted at 100 keV energy, developed UNCD films prototype with varied transport properties showing insulating behavior at low doses with hopping type conduction process & semi-metallic like conduction at moderate to high doses with an almost five times enhancement in conductivity values w.r.t. undoped diamond.

Utility:

• Multi-functionalities with diverse applications including development of room temperature quantum bits (QUBITs) for quantum computing, biosensing, detectors, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), color centers, diamond based electronic devices & etc.