Abstract
Cubic boron nitride (c-BN), although offering a number of highly attractive properties comparable to diamond, like hardness, chemical inertness and a large electronic bandgap, up to now has not found the attention it deserves. This mostly has to do with preparational problems, with easy chemical routes not available and, instead, the necessity to apply ion-bombardment-assisted methods. Hence, most of the c-BN samples prepared as thin films have been nanocrystalline, making the prospect of using this material for high-temperature electronic applications an illusion. Although heteroepitaxial nucleation of c-BN on diamond substrates has been demonstrated using the high-pressure–high-temperature technique1,2, none of the low-pressure methods ever succeeded in the epitaxial growth of c-BN on any substrate. Here, we demonstrate that heteroepitaxial c-BN films can be prepared at 900 °C on highly (001)-oriented diamond films, formed by chemical vapour deposition, using ion-beam-assisted deposition as a low-pressure technique. The orientation relationship was found to be c-BN(001)[100]||diamond(001)[100]. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy additionally proved that epitaxy can be achieved without an intermediate hexagonal BN layer that is commonly observed3 on various substrates.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Mishima, O., Tanaka, J., Yamaoka, S. & Fuknaga, O. High temperature cubic boron nitride p-n-junction diode made at high-pressure. Science 238, 181–183 (1987).
Lux, B., Kalss, W., Haubner, R. & Taniguchi, T. Nucleation of c-BN on various substrate materials under high-pressure-high-temperature conditions. Diamond Relat. Mater. 8, 415–422 (1999).
Kester, D.J., Ailey, K.S., Lichtenwalner, D.J. & Davis, R.F. Growth and characterization of cubic boron nitride thin films. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 12, 3074–3081 (1994).
Widmayer, P., Ziemann, P. & Boyen, H.-G. Electron energy loss spectroscopy - an additional tool to characterize thin films of cubic boron nitride. Diamond Relat. Mater. 7, 385–390 (1998).
Hahn, J. et al. Cubic boron nitride films by dc and rf magnetron sputtering: Layer characterization and process diagnostics. Diamond Relat. Mater. 5, 1103–1111 (1996).
Medlin, D.L., Friedmann, T.A., Mirkarimi, P.B., Cardinale, G.F. & McCarty, K.F. Crystallographic texture in cubic boron nitride thin films. J. Appl. Phys. 79, 3567–3571 (1996).
Hofsäss, H., Feldermann, H., Sebastian, M. & Ronning, C. Thresholds for the phase formation of cubic boron nitride thin films. Phys. Rev. B 55, 13230–13233 (1997).
Litvinov, D. & Clarke, R. In situ texture monitoring for growth of oriented cubic boron nitride films. Appl. Phys. Lett. 74, 955–957 (1999).
Matsumoto, S. & Zhang, W.J. High-rate deposition of high-quality, thick cubic boron nitride films by bias-assisted DC jet plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition. Jap. J. Appl. Phys. 39, L442–L444 (2000).
Boyen, H.-G., Widmayer, P., Schwertberger, D., Deyneka, N. & Ziemann, P. Sequential ion-induced stress relaxation and growth - a new way to prepare stress-relieved thick films of cubic boron nitride. Appl. Phys. Lett. 76, 709–711 (2000).
Sanjurjo, J.A., Lopez-Cruz, E., Vogl, P., & Cardona, M. Dependence on volume of the phonon frequencies and the ir effective charges of several III-V semiconductors. Phys. Rev. B 28, 4579–4584 (1983).
Mirkarimi, P.B., Medlin, D.L., McCart, K.F. & Barbour, J.C. Growth of cubic BN films on ß-SiC by ion-assisted pulsed laser deposition. Appl. Phys. Lett. 66, 2813–2815 (1995).
Ye, J., Oechsner, H. & Westermeyr, S. Effect of substrate temperature and ion bombardment on the formation of cubic boron nitride films: A two-step deposition approach. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 19, 2294–2300 (2001).
Deyneka, N. et al. Depth profiles of Argon incorporated into Boron Nitride films during preparation and their temperature dependent evolution. Diamond Relat. Mater. 12, 37–46 (2003).
Doolittle, I.R. Algorithms for the rapid simulation of Rutherford backscattering spectra. Nucl. Instrum. Methods B 9, 344–351 (1985).
Jaouen, M., Hug, G., Gonnet, V., Demazeau, G. & Tourillon, G. An EELS and XAS study of cubic boron-nitride synthesized under high-pressure high-temperature conditions. Microsc. Microanal. Microstruct. 6, 127–139 (1995).
Widmayer, P., Boyen, H.-G., Ziemann, P., Reinke, P. & Oelhafen, P. Electron spectroscopy on boron nitride thin films: Comparison of near-surface to bulk electronic properties. Phys. Rev. B 59, 5233–5241 (1999).
Haubner R. Deposition of thermal CVD low-pressure diamond on cubic-BN. Int. J. Refract. Hard Metals 9, 70–76 (1990).
Koizumi, S., Murakami, T., Inuzuka, T. & Suzuki, K. Epitaxial growth of diamond thin films on cubic boron nitride {111} surfaces by dc plasma chemical vapor deposition. Appl. Phys. Lett. 57, 563–565 (1990).
Yoshikawa, M., Ishida, H., Ishitani, A., Koizumi, S. & Inuzuka, T. Study of crystallographic orientations in the diamond film on the (100) surface of cubic boron nitride using a Raman microprobe. Appl. Phys. Lett. 58, 1387–1388 (1991).
Otano-Rivera, W., Pilione, L.J., Zapien, J.A. & Messier, R. Cubic boron nitride thin film deposition by unbalanced magnetron sputtering and dc pulsed substrate biasing. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 16, 1331–1335 (1998).
Pascallon, J. et al. Microstructure of c-BN thin films deposited on diamond films. Diamond Relat. Mater. 8, 325–330 (1999).
Ullmann, J., Kellock, A.J. & Baglin, A.E.E. Reduction of intrinsic stress in cubic boron nitride films. Thin Solid Films 341, 238–245 (1999).
Fahy, S. Calculation of the strain-induced shifts in the infrared-absorption peaks of cubic boron nitride. Phys. Rev. B 51, 12873–12875 (1995).
Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within Graduiertenkolleg 328 as well as project Zi 317/16. The authors are grateful to the Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung for access to the high-voltage TEM and to S. Grözinger, R. Höschen and G. Kästle for technical assistance.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhang, X., Boyen, HG., Deyneka, N. et al. Epitaxy of cubic boron nitride on (001)-oriented diamond. Nature Mater 2, 312–315 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat870
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat870
This article is cited by
-
Pressure-dependent mode Grüneisen parameters and their impact on thermal expansion coefficient of zinc-blende InN
Journal of Materials Science (2023)
-
Ion-assisted deposition of amorphous PbO layers
Journal of Materials Science (2017)
-
Graphene nanosheet-induced toughening of yttria-stabilized zirconia
Applied Physics A (2017)
-
Ultrahard stitching of nanotwinned diamond and cubic boron nitride in C2-BN composite
Scientific Reports (2016)
-
Misfit accommodation mechanism at the heterointerface between diamond and cubic boron nitride
Nature Communications (2015)