It is the objective of this proposal to demonstrate the successful growth of a heteroepitaxial thin diamond film on a silicon substrate, using a combination of reactive, biased, laser ablation and microwave CVD techniques. It is proposed that this will be accomplished through the use of two interfacial layers. The first interfacial layer will be an epitaxial cubic boron nitride layer, formed on the silicon surface, to act as a lattice matching layer between diamond and silicon. The second interface layer, applied to the surface of the cubic boron nitride layer, applied to the surface of the cubic boron nitride layer, will be an ultra-thin, reactive laser ablated carbon layer to achieve passivation of the cubic boron nitride surface and act as a nucleation layer for diamond growth. Once the silicon substrate is properly prepared with the laser ablated films, a thin heteroepitaxial diamond film will be grown by microwave CVD.
