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Polycrystalline CVD diamond film possesses many outstanding physical and mechanical properties which make it a very important engineering material. However, high hardness value and extreme brittleness have made CVD diamond a very difficult material to be machined by conventional grinding and polishing process. To solve the problem, there have been many researches focused on reducing surface roughness of the CVD diamond film by various approaches. In the present study, the microwave CVD method was employed to produce polycrystalline diamond films on single crystal silicon. A novel method which atmospheric pressure air plasma (APAP) was used in conjunction with the inductive coupling plasma (ICP) to etch CVD diamond films. The results showed that the APAP could activate the as-grown diamond surface where a modified surface layer was formed. This activated layer could be removed more easily during the subsequent ICP process. Though little differences were observed between the micro-Raman spectra of CVD diamond films with/without the APAP pretreatment or before/after the ICP etching, the microscopic surface morphology did exhibit quite significant variations. |