We are excited to merge teams with Augsburg Diamond Technology (Audiatec) GmbH and its singular capability to create single-crystal diamonds on a scalable non-diamond substrate. It is a perfect match: Diamond Foundry has the leading 200mm diamond-growth reactor technology operating at scale, and Audiatec has the unique expertise to create the mother of all diamond wafers to run in them.
We have been a customer of Auditec's for years and come to appreciate their extraordinary team and technology. By joining forces, we can now access their know-how and jointly take it further.
Creating a single-crystal material depends on having a single crystal of the same material as a starting point. Otherwise, the atoms added would not know where to locate precisely according to its atomic lattice. Over three decades of scientific research, a physics professor and two of his doctoral students at the University of Augsburg in Germany made a surprising discovery, as close to magic as it goes in the world of atoms, and developed it as part of their startup: One can fabricate a single-crystal diamond by exercising specific control over the first ten atoms hitting a specialized nanometer sandwich of iridium and yttria-stabilized zirconia on a silicon wafer.
This new method, called heteroepitaxy, makes it possible to produce single-crystal diamond wafers larger than any existing diamond. The innovation has already led to the creation of single-crystal diamonds as large as 100mm in diameter for the first time in history.
Together with our proprietary 200mm diamond-growth plasma reactors, mosaic fusion techniques, and wafer singulation technology, we now have a clear path for realizing single-crystal diamond wafers. Our goal is to deliver a better wafer underpinning critical industries in the future, from computing or wireless communications to power electronics.