Electronics made using diamond-based chips would have many advantages, but have been hard to make – a new technique involving sticky tape could change that
By Alex Wilkins
18 December 2024
This thin wafer of diamond is also very flexible
Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08218-x
A new way to make ultra-thin diamond wafers using sticky tape could help produce diamond-based electronics, which might one day be a useful alternative to silicon-based designs.
Diamond has unusual electronic properties: it is both a good insulator and allows electrons with certain energies to move with little resistance. This can translate to being able to handle higher energies with greater efficiency than conventional silicon chip designs.
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However, producing working diamond chips requires large and very thin wafers, similar to the thin silicon wafers used to build modern computer chips, which have proved tricky to create.
Now, Zhiqin Chu at the University of Hong Kong and his colleagues have found a way to produce extremely thin and flexible diamond wafers, using sticky tape.
Chu and his colleagues first implanted nano-sized diamonds in a small silicon wafer, then blew methane gas over it at high temperatures to form a continuous, thin diamond sheet. They then created a small crack on one side of the attached diamond sheet, before peeling off the diamond layer using regular sticky tape.