Effect of hydrogen implantation on the graphite used in high pressure diamond synthesis

The objective of the present work is to investigate the effect of hydrogen implantation on graphite in the high pressure diamond synthesis. A comparison of the graphite/diamond conversion for different fluences of hydrogen implantation revealed that the diamond nucleation and the total mass yield are always higher (up to 46%) than in experiments without implantation. The maximum nucleation for the studied cases occurred at a fluence of 1×1017 hydrogen ions/cm2. This behavior is not observed when other ions, such as krypton and argon, are implanted on the graphite, or when hydrogen is present in the reaction cell but not implanted on the graphite. The results were interpreted as a consequence of the creation of additional tetrahedral sp3 bonded carbon atoms when the graphite is hydrogen implanted, which would act as effective diamond nucleation sites in the high pressure synthesis