The Novel Nucleation Process - An Update: A Method in the Working

The novel nucleation process (NNP) was introduced publicly 4 years ago, here in Tsukuba, at the ADC/FCT 1999 meeting and has been in the working since then. The main user was Dr. Jim Butler of the Naval Research Laboratory and recently it made its way to AFRL/WPAFB in Dayton Ohio. A few papers appeared already and more are to come where NNP facilitated the use of diamond thin films for various applications. In this paper we will present data that gives some scientific insight of this method. We will present data on the optical properties of the PT (pre treated) film (using Ellipsometric characterization) and EELS data for the material identification of that carbon film. We will show a range of applications that have been opened up by the NNP method. In particular we will show the use of diamond films as an active passivation layer for high voltage SiC Schottky diodes and the use of diamond as the insulation layer on top of a new family of metal matrix composite (MMC) materials for the packaging of high power devices. It will be obvious to the listener that NNP can be used by anyone involved in diamond CVD and especially to those that didn't think diamond could be used for their particular application. NNP has made diamond an easy material to grow and use in ways and means not accessible before NNP. The more people join in the use of NNP, and the more it will be used by many others for their application it will become more obvious that this is the way to grow diamond in most practical cases.