A surface and a gas-phase mechanism for the description of growth on the diamond(100) surface in an oxy-acetylene torch reactor

A gas-phase and a surface mechanism were developed, suitable for multidimensional simulations of diamond oxy-acetylene torch reactors. The gas-phase mechanism was obtained by reducing a 48 species combustion chemistry mechanism to a 27 species mechanism with the aid of sensitivity analysis. The surface mechanism for growth on monocrystalline (100) surfaces developed, was based on literature quantum-mechanical calculations by Skokov et al. It consists of 67 elementary reaction steps and 41 species, and contains CH₃ and C₂H₂ as gas-phase growth precursors and atomic hydrogen and oxygen to etch carbon from the surface. The gas-phase and surface chemistry models were tested in one-dimensional simulations, yielding dependencies of the growth rate on feed composition and surface temperature that are in qualitative agreement with the experiments. A more detailed study of the surface chemistry showed that, compared to CH₃, acetylene contributes very little to diamond growth. Furthermore, molecular and atomic oxygen do not affect the diamond surface as much as atomic hydrogen because of their low concentrations.