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Thin-Film Diamond Deposition
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# : |
11950 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1987 |
3,365 Words |
| Author
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Michael Woods
Michael Woods, a contributing editor for THE WORLD & I, has
received numerous science-writing awards. |
Mention the word diamond and most people visualize a sparkling gemstone blazing with facets that reflect a thousand shards of light.
The diamond serves as an almost universal symbol of eternal love, while more practically, diamonds are faintly recognized as useful in industrial cutting and grinding tools.
Now a little-publicized new technology is quietly moving society toward a totally new concept of diamond. The word diamond no longer will mean only a three-dimensional lump of material - a precisely cut gemstone or a dull grit of industrial diamond embedded in a cutting tool.
Rather, it will mean a remarkable thin, transparent film that looks much like clear coatings of varnish or lacquer but that carries with it divers properties in relation to heat, light, electricity, and mechanical stress. The range of potential applications for this thin-film diamond technology is so broad that some scientists even speak of a "Diamond Age," in which thin films of diamond could open a new era in materials science.
"A Diamond Age?" Boris Deryagin mused during an interview in his laboratory at the huge, austere Institute for Physical Chemistry in Moscow, where the technology was developed 10 years ago and then left to gather dust - its practical applications overlooked by the rest of the world. Deryagin is codiscoverer of the key process for laying diamond crystal layers of carbon atoms onto a surface. "Yes, there will be a Diamond Age opening up as a result of this technology," he says.
The technology makes it possible to deposit thin films of synthetic diamond on a wide variety of objects and materials, giving them the exceptional properties of diamond itself. These properties go far beyond those recognized by most laymen.
Not only is diamond remarkable for its hardness and inertness, but it also has superb thermal, electrical, and optical properties. Diamond is one of the best conductors of heat. Although pure diamond is a high-quality electrical insulator, with the addition of controlled quantities of impurities, diamond becomes a semiconductor that could challenge the supremacy of silicon in electronics. In reaction to visible light, diamond is transparent like glass, but diamond is also transparent for other emissions that are blocked by glass. Taken all together, these properties give thin-film diamond the potential for an assortment of
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