Lucent Technologies Inc.

At&t Bell Laboratories

Guang-kai David Jeng

James W Mitchell

Lawrence Seibles

The present inventors have discovered how to make continuous films of single-phase crystalline .beta.-C.sub.3 N.sub.4 using microwave plasma chemical vapor transport. The films are hard, translucent nanocrystalline films useful for protecting a substrate.

Devices comprising films of .beta.-C.sub.3 N.sub.4

In contrast to previous approaches, the present inventors have discovered that diamond films can be grown by carbon CVT reactions occurring exclusively in the exothermic regime, where the lower temperature (&lt;1500.degree.C.) conditions considerably simplify the equilibrium gas phase chemistry. Under these conditions of a small temperature gradient and short transport distance between the source and substrate, supersaturation of the gas phase with regard to graphite and diamond does not attain sufficiently high values to induce spontaneous homonucleation of graphite and diamond in the gas phase. With this process, temperatures as low as 680.degree.C. were found to be sufficient to induce the growth of continuous diamond films free of non-diamond allotropes.

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North Plainfield, NJ, United States of America

Guang-kai David Jeng