We are proud to announce that our scientists and engineers accomplished the historical breakthrough of creating the world’s first single-crystal diamond wafer, three decades in the making and an icon of tenacity.
DF’s first diamond wafer is a single crystal of diamond 100mm in diameter with a weight of 110 carats. Its creation effectively arcs back to the invention of the first silicon wafer in 1959.
Producing a single-crystal diamond in wafer size remained an elusive holy grail of technology for long: Growing a diamond of such size using high-pressure HPHT technology would entail ungodly pressures that no known material could ever uphold.
On the other hand, employing thin-film atomic layering technologies to fabricate it would require a matrix of the same size, which doesn’t exist. Creating a diamond in the ordered atomic organization of a single crystal involves a mother base that helps added atoms find their place. Otherwise, it is like multiple people trying to tile a floor from different ends of a room without using a template: They would meet somewhere in the middle without fitting the ordered pattern. Such a misfit would mean the failure of a single crystal.
New science had to be discovered over three decades of persistent work to achieve this matrix: How to make the first ten atoms of a deposition believe there is a diamond base even if there is not. Controlling those atoms over the wafer area in the exact right way is a mind-boggling challenge. And doing so that they then form a single crystal is plain magical.
Thanks to its many facets of ultimate performance, including extreme thermal conductivity and electrical insulation, single-crystal diamond can be used as a semiconductor substrate that accelerates today’s most exciting mega techs: AI computing, electric cars, and wireless communications. We look forward to positively contributing to these industries with it.