Buy Online: Major Review by Element Six Scientists Demonstrates Growth in Synthetic Diamond Applications
In a major review paper, Element Six scientists have charted the extensive range of applications opening up for synthetic diamond, thanks to developments in materials and technology related to diamond synthesis based on chemical vapour deposition (CVD).
In the paper, ‘CVD synthetic diamond: materials, technology and applications’, recently published in a special edition of the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, the E6 scientists point to the substantial progress made in CVD diamond technology over the last 10 years.
Synthesis of diamond by CVD has not only contributed to reducing the costs of the material but has enabled the extreme properties of diamond to be more fully utilized. It has long been recognized that, aside from its extreme hardness, diamond is a remarkable material with many properties – optical, thermal, electrochemical, chemical, electronic – that outclass competing materials. When combined, these properties offer the designer an engineering material with tremendous potential to create solutions that can shift performance to new levels or enable completely new approaches to challenging problems.
CVD diamond offers exceptional performance in applications as diverse as medical diagnostics, water treatment, radiation detection, high power electronics, consumer audio, magnetometry, quantum optics and novel lasers. CVD diamond can be tailored for specific applications, based on the ability to synthesize a consistent and engineered high performance product.
Components routinely fabricated in CVD diamond now span tweeters for loudspeakers, radiation detectors and sensors, optical components for lasers, windows for radio frequency and microwave transmission, a range of blades and cutting tools, and electrodes for electrochemical sensing, ozone generation and direct oxidation of organic matter.
Developments in material synthesis and processing are leading to high purity and low defect grades of the material, such as an ultra-low birefringence single crystal CVD diamond. This material provides a step forward for all photonics applications of diamond, and is being trialled in laser applications. A grade of CVD diamond with high isotopic purity as well as high chemical purity is under development for quantum optical applications and could lead the way to faster, more powerful computers and new solutions in both cryptography and cryptanalysis.
Several companies have been established to exploit the commercial potential of CVD diamond material. These cover wastewater treatment systems; ozone generation equipment; developing active electronic devices using CVD diamond; and diamond detectors for markets including medical X-ray dosimetry, radiation monitoring in the nuclear and defence industries, data logging in oil well exploration and UV photolithography for semiconductor manufacturing.
“These investments,” say the scientists, “coupled with the broad range of applications being developed elsewhere, show that a new age of industrial diamond has truly begun – that of CVD diamond.”
The article (J.Phys.:Condens.Matter 21(2009) 364221) can be viewed at http://stacks.iop.org/0953-8984/21/364221