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Reducing the self-heating of SiC- and GaN/SiC-based high-powered devices by integrating diamond films offers promising performance enhancement of these devices. However, such a reduction strategy faces serious problems, such as diamond nucleation on SiC and stress accumulation greater than 10 GPa. In this work, a SiN x dielectric layer (∼50 nm) was coated onto the C polar face of a 4H–SiC wafer using microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) to improve direct dense diamond nucleation and growth, significantly reduce the stress, and build Si–C(SiC)⋯Si⋯C(diamond) bond bridges. This SiN x thin layer, prepared by activating Si ions under Ar/N plasma during magnetron sputtering, gave rise to local Si 3 N 4 crystal features and a low effective work function (EWF) for promoting surface dipoles with electronegative carbon-containing groups. In the H plasma environment during diamond growth, the local Si 3 N 4 crystal was amorphized, and the N atoms escaped as a result of atomic H and the high temperature. At the same time, C atoms diffused into the SiN x and formed C–Si bonds (49.7% of the total C bonds) by replacing N–Si and Si–Si, thus increasing the direct nucleation density of the diamond grains. The diamond thin film grew rapidly and uniformly, with a grain size of approximately 2 μm in mixed orientation, and the stress of the 2-inch SiC-on-diamond wafer was extremely low (to ∼0.1–0.2 GPa). In comparison, partially connected diamond grains (>10 μm) on the bare SiC in the preferential (110) orientation resulted in a film with twin-grain features and significant stress, which was associated with the hexagonal lattice interface of 4H–SiC. These results are considered the material and surface/interface bases for actively controlling wafer fabrication and enhancing the heat dissipation of SiC and GaN/SiC electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to realize the practical use of diamond as a semiconductor material, large-area single-crystal diamond wafers with uniform quality are required. Mosaic growth is an effective method to produce inch-grade single-crystal diamonds. However, the quality of the wafer is limited by the junction interface seriously, because cracking occurs easily due to the high internal stress. In this paper, the repetition growth method was adopted to grow mosaic splicing single-crystal diamond without polycrystalline diamond interface. The high-quality single crystal diamond slices were reduplicated by microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD). The substrates were obtained by cutting a piece of CVD diamond along a plane perpendicular to 〈001〉 (with a (100)-oriented surface). The evolution of the growth characteristics around the junction of the substrates at different stages was studied. The results show that the surface of the epitaxial layers gradually evolves from blurry terraces to a regular well-ordered step flow. When the substrates have the same deviation direction and the off-direction angles are within 3°, the junction of the substrates can connect smoothly. Raman mapping shows that there is a mixture of tensile stress and compressive stress near the junction. As the thickness of the epitaxial layer increases from 280 μm to 560 μm, the range of tensile stress near the joint area expands from 85 μm to 150 μm, the maximum tensile stress increases from 0.08 GPa to 0.16 GPa. In addition, the value of FWHM in the X-ray rocking curve is less than 2.80 cm−1 around the junction, which indicates good crystal quality. [Display omitted] • The evolution of growth characteristics around the junction in the mosaic diamond was studied. • The mosaic boundary evolved from blurry terraces to a well-ordered step flow and finally connected. • The lowest value of tensile stress near the joint area was reported as the film thickness increased. • The larger FWHM of Raman peak around the junction is caused by the increased tensile stress. • The "inherit" effect of NV content of the epitaxial layer was observed for the corresponding substrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]