Determination of elastic and thermal properties of a thin nanocrystalline diamond coating using all-optical methods

Results are presented on the thermal and elastic properties of a thin, 1.5 μm, nanocrystalline diamond coating (NCD), deposited on a silicon substrate by microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. A combination of two all-optical measurement techniques, impulsive stimulated thermal scattering and grating induced laser beam deflection, was employed to launch and detect surface acoustic waves (SAWs). The relation between the dispersive propagation velocity of SAWs to the coating-substrate geometry is exploited to determine the elastic properties of the NCD coating. The elastic properties are found to be consistent with literature values. The thermal properties of the coating were determined by monitoring the thermal diffusion induced washing away of the laser induced transient surface temperature grating. The transient thermal grating signals were fitted by the low-frequency limit of a thermoelastic model for a multilayer configuration. Similar to the dispersion of the surface acoustic wave velocity, the characteristic time of the thermal diffusion driven grating decay evolves from a coating-dominated value at short grating spacings towards a substrate-dominated value at grating spacings well exceeding the coating thickness. The grating spacing dependence of the corresponding effective thermal diffusivity was experimentally determined and fitted, leading to a value for the thermal diffusivity of the NCD coating α_NCD = 8.4_−0.1^+2.7 mm²·s⁻¹, which is an order of magnitude lower than that of the silicon substrate. The low value of the thermal diffusivity is interpreted with a simple touching model. - Highlights: • We investigate a thin nano-crystalline diamond coating. • We used two all optical surface acoustic wave based methods. • We found a young's modulus and density that is in line with literature. • The thermal diffusivity of the NCD coating was 2 orders of magnitude lower than the one of bulk diamond