Data for: Surface morphology evolution of a polycrystalline diamond by inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE)

After etching at RFP of 100W, I<111>/<110>, which is the peak intensity ratio of the <111> and <110> orientation, decreases from 0.904 to 0.332. This demonstrates that the <111> crystal orientation of etched PCD exhibits weaker intensity and becomes less dominant in XRD diffraction content after etching.

This was due to preferential etching /oxidation of the <111> orientation compared with other crystal orientations, which agrees with existing literature. However, after subsequent etching at RFP of 400W, I<111>/<110> decreases slightly from 0.332 to 0.235. This minor change occurred owing to the dominant role of ion-bombardment enhanced etching when the RFP was as high as 400W, which surpassed the reactive selective etching on crystal orientations.