109 9 NANODIAMOND SEEDING FOR NUCLEATION AND GROWTH OF CVD DIAMOND FILMS V. Ralchenko 1 , A. Saveliev 1 , S. Voronina 1 , A. Dementjev 2 , K. Maslakov 2 , M. Salerno 3 , A. Podesta 3 , and P. Milani 3 1 A.M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute RAS, Vavilov str. 38, Moscow 119991, Russia 2 IRTM, RRC "Kurchatov Institute", Kurchatov square, Moscow 123182, Russia 3 INFM-Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita di Milano, Via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy i Abstract: Detonation nanodiamonds areshown to be effective seeds for growth of CVD diamond films as they provide high nucleation density on a substrate and can be placed on shaped surfaces and even into porous materials. XPS, AES and TEM analyses give useful information on the early stage of diamond growth. The transfer molding technique for manufacturing various diamond shapes is described. As the nucleation side of free-standing films produced by molding is the “working” surface, emphasis is placed on the study of its properties, such as topography, impurity contamination, thermal conductivity, and wettability. Diamond items grown directly on patterned Si templates are illustrated. Keywords: detonation nanodiamond, CVD diamond film, nucleation, XPS, XAES, patterning, molding 1. INTRODUCTION Spontaneous nucleation of diamond on a foreign substrate in a CVD process has a low probability; for example, the nucleation density is typically of the order of 10 4 nuclei/cm 2 on silicon. A much higher density of nucleation centers must be achieved to produce thin continuous films or conformal diamond coatings on surfaces with intricate shape. Therefore, diamond seeds for further growth must be placed on the substrate before or during diamond deposition. If the nucleation density is 10 8 –10 10 cm -2 , grains of 1.0–0.1 μm in size are formed on the substrate, evolving into columnar crystallites with their size gradually increasing with the film thickness. The surface relief of the bottom (nucleation) side of a free-standing film D.M. Gruen et al. (eds. ), Synthesis, Properties and Applications of Ultrananocrystalline Diamond, 109-124. © 2005 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.