Behaviour of Self-Standing CVD Diamond Film with Different Dominant Crystalline Surfaces in Thermal-Iron Plate Polishing

Self-standing CVD diamond films with different dominant crystalline surfaces are polished by the thermal-iron plate polishing method. The influence of the dominant crystalline surfaces on polishing efficiency is investigated by measuring the removal rate and final roughness. The smallest rms roughness of 0.14μm is measured with smallest removal rate in the films with the initial (220) dominant crystalline surface. Activation energy for the polishing is analysed by the Arrhenius relation. It is found that the values are 170kJ/mol, 222kJ/mol and 214kJ/mol for the film with three different dominant crystalline surfaces. Based on these values, the polishing cause is regarded as the graphitization-controlling process. In the xperiment, we find that transformation of the dominant crystalline surfaces from (111) to (220) always appears in the polishing process when we polish the (111) dominant surface.