Effect of grain size and pores on the dielectric constant of nanocrystalline diamond films

The nanocrystalline diamond films with different morphologies and roughness were synthesized by a bias-assisted hot filament chemical vapor deposition method. It was found that the nanocrystalline diamond film exhibited low-k dielectric properties with the increase of CH4 concentration during diamond deposition. The low-k nanocrystalline diamond film with grain size of around 40 nm and dielectric constant of 2.4 was obtained at the CH4 concentration of 16% and the bias of -140 V. The low dielectric constant can be mainly attributed to the decrease of diamond grain sizes and the formation of more nanopores in as-grown nanocrystalline diamond film, both of which were discussed in details based on the grain size determined band gap expansion effect and the two-phase dielectric mixing model, respectively. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.