Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Chemical Vapour Deposition Synthetic Diamond: Materials, Technology and Applications

This is a humongous review article on CVD diamond.

Abstract: Substantial developments have been achieved in the synthesis of chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond in recent years, providing engineers and designers with access to a large range of new diamond materials. CVD diamond has a number of outstanding material properties that can enable exceptional performance in applications as diverse as medical diagnostics, water treatment, radiation detection, high power electronics, consumer audio, magnetometry and novel lasers. Often the material is synthesized in planar form, however non-planar geometries are also possible and enable a number of key applications. This article reviews the material properties and characteristics of single crystal and polycrystalline CVD diamond, and how these can be utilized, focusing particularly on optics, electronics and electrochemistry. It also summarizes how CVD diamond can be tailored for specific applications, based on the ability to synthesize a consistent and engineered high performance product.

Diamond, and in particular these CVD diamonds, are not only strong and hard, but also can have properties that can be tailored to meet various needs simply by different doping. It can be a good field emitter with the proper doping. Not only is it a strong insulator electrically, but it also has a relatively good thermal conductivity for an insulator, which makes it a good heat conductor.

Zz.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

An addition (not correction): single crystal diamond, including (and sometimes especially) CVD diamond has "relatively good thermal conductivity" compared to absolutely everything else ;) It's hard to beat. It's one of very few materials that conducts heat through phonons better than conductors move heat through electrons (pardon the poor wording).

Micro and nano crystalline diamond, on the other hand, tend to have mediocre to really poor thermal conductivity. Much of the nano stuff is sp3 diamond embedded in an hybrid sp2/sp3 diamondish slough that impedes some qualities and improves others.

-locrian