Reactive ion etching of the synthetic diamond surface

The reactive ion etching of a synthetic polycrystalline diamond film and synthetic monocrystallne diamonds in plasmas based on Ar, O2, their mixtures, and SF6 is performed. In plasmas based on Ar/O2 mixture and SF6 etching the rates of 6 nm/min and 70 nm/min respectively are achieved. The selectivities for aluminum are respectively 10 and 4. Etching in Ar/O2 based plasma leads to smoothing the polycrystalline diamond film and monocrystalline diamond surfaces. Etching in SF6 based plasma leads to an increase in the roughness of the monocrystalline diamond surface and the erosion of the alumimum mask.