Plasma etching of diamond surfaces

1. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material comprising a surface having a surface roughness R q of less than 5 nm, wherein said polycrystalline CVD diamond material consists of a layer of polycrystalline diamond material that excludes any layers of single crystal diamond material and wherein said surface is damage free to the extent that the following criteria is fulfilled:

if an anisotropic thermal revealing etch is applied thereto, a number density of defects revealed by the anisotropic thermal revealing etch is less than 100 per mm 2 , wherein the anisotropic thermal revealing etch is performed using the following procedure:

(i) examining the surface at a magnification of 50 times using reflected light with a metallurgical microscope to ensure that there are no surface features present;

(ii) exposing the surface to an air-butane flame thereby raising the surface to a temperature in a range 800° C. to 1000° C. for a period of 10 seconds;

(iii) examining the surface at a magnification of 50 times using reflected light with a metallurgical microscope and counting defects revealed by the anisotropic thermal revealing etch to determine their number density; and

(iv) repeating steps (ii) and (iii) and comparing the measured density of defects with that of the previous cycle until the following condition is met: if the number density of defects counted is less than or equal to 150% of the number density determined in the previous cycle, then all the defects are deemed to be revealed and the measurement recorded is the average of the measurements of the last two cycles, if not the cycle is repeated again, and

wherein the number density of defects in step (iii) is measured by the following method:

(i) the defects to be counted are those defects visible at a magnification of 50 times with a metallurgical microscope which fall totally or partially within a rectangular area 1 mm×0.2 mm projected onto the surface being characterised;

(ii) the area is selected at random over the surface or portion of the surface to be characterised and randomly oriented;

(iii) the defects are counted in a minimum of 5 such areas; and

(iv) the number density of defects is calculated by dividing the total number of defects counted by the total area examined to give a number density in terms of defects per mm 2 .

2. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 1 , wherein the surface roughness is less than 1 nm.

3. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 1 , wherein said surface is damage free to the extent that if the anisotropic thermal revealing etch is applied thereto, the number density of defects revealed by the anisotropic thermal revealing etch is less than 50 per mm 2 .

4. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 1 , wherein said surface is damage free to the extent that if a backscattering ion beam analysis is applied thereto, a backscattered ion yield is less than 5% of incident ions.

5. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 1 , wherein a maximum depth of an etched structural feature in a direction perpendicular to said surface is less than 20 μm; and

a smallest lateral dimension of the etched structural feature is at least 0.5 times the maximum depth of the etched structural feature.

6. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 1 , wherein said surface is a growth surface of the polycrystalline CVD diamond material.

7. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 1 , wherein said surface comprises topographical features.

8. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 7 , wherein said topographical features comprise structural features having a depth in a range 2 nm to 100 nm.

9. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 7 , wherein said topographical features form an optical surface structure.

10. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 9 , wherein said topographical features comprise structural features having a depth in a range 200 nm to 20 μm.

11. A polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 9 , wherein said optical surface structure comprises a smooth curved surface.

12. A method of fabricating the polycrystalline CVD diamond material according to claim 1 , the method comprising:

mechanically processing a surface of a polycrystalline CVD diamond material, wherein said polycrystalline CVD diamond material consists of a single layer of polycrystalline diamond material that excludes any layers of single crystal diamond material; and

etching said surface to remove surface damage introduced during the mechanical processing,

wherein said etching comprises inductively coupled plasma etching (ICP) using a gas mixture containing argon and chlorine, and

wherein at least 0.5 μm of polycrystalline CVD diamond material is removed from said surface during etching without unduly increasing a surface roughness R q of the surface, whereby after etching the surface has a surface roughness R q of less than 5 nm and is damage free to the extent that if an anisotropic thermal revealing etch is applied thereto, a number density of defects revealed by the anisotropic thermal revealing etch is less than 100 per mm 2 as defined in claim 1 .