opencvd
Open Source Chemical Vapour Deposition Reactor Shematics & Control Software
The aim of this project is to grow diamonds using CVD method. The CVD Process in general is quite well documented in many papers, however calculating the dimensions of the chamber (critical) and tuning the chamber (vacuum pressure, amount of gas / flow rates, plasma temperature etc) is where most of the difficulty lies.
Overview
Reactor Construction
We will need a to construct a working reactor
- Vacuum chamber / Pump (staged Mehanical & turbo molecular)
- Quarts Viewports
- Programmable flow regulators (expensive) / Gas Connections / Valves etc
- Magnetron (inc PSU) & Waveguides
- More stuff
Management Software
We will need software to control all aspects of the reactor
- gas injection flow rate, pressure, & timing (methane/hydrogen)
- vacuum pressue (control of the vacuum pump(s))
- power supply to the magnetron (control the plasma temperature)
Seed diamond slices are normally used, and the new diamond will be grown (deposited) on top of this starting slice.
I would like to explore alterate methods & substrates, for example to see if it is possible to grow the diamond starting on a thin firm of carbon (graphene)... highly probable that this is not possible, just an example.
Resources
I will add to this list as i find useful papers
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231103160_Diamond_growth_by_chemical_vapour_deposition
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324037907_Microwave_Plasma_CVD_Reactors_for_Growing_Diamond_in_the_Laboratory
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309166692_Microwave_Plasma_CVD_Grown_Single_Crystal_Diamonds_-_A_Review
- https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bbm%3A978-1-4757-4751-5%2F1.pdf
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OEz_e9C4KM (check out the sputter gun construction)