| dc.description.abstract | Diamond has been the focus of much attention through the years, largely due to its potential usefulness in a wide variety of industrial applications. Diamond research has centered around the development of alternative, commercially viable methods of synthesis, and in recent years considerable progress has been achieved in approaches involving the low pressure chemical vapor deposition of diamond. Nevertheless, a thorough understanding of this phenomenon remains illusive despite the number of ongoing studies in this area. The purpose of this study was to develop a simple model to predict accurately the chemical vapor deposition of diamond using low pressure combustion synthesis. An effort was made to formulate a plausible growth mechanism based on a review of previous studies in the literature elucidating the process of diamond chemical vapor deposition. A thermodynamic approach was then utilized to analyze the growth of carbon in C2H2 + 02, C2H4 + 02, and CH4 + 02 systems with the purpose of estimating an approximate growth domain for diamond. Finally, a coupled thermodynamic-kinetic model was developed to predict steady-state diamond growth rates in atmospheric C2H2 + 02 combustion systems. Results obtained agreed reasonably well with experimental data. Although the proposed model was still in its preliminary stages of development, it proved to be a useful predictive tool for qualitative analysis. | |
