All you need to know about diamond
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points on diamond as a semi-conductor
It is composed of carbon
The carbon atoms that make up diamond are arranged in a face-centred cubic crystal structure with half of the tetrahedral sites occupied, which gives it many of its superlative properties.
Also superconducting at low temperatures (-269°C)
Thanks to our expertise in high doping, DIAMFAB wafers can be used for superconducting applications.
It is a material with a very wide band gap
Its band gap is 5.5 eV, five times greater than that of silicon at 1.1 eV. The result is a very low number of intrinsic carriers at room temperature. This property led to it being classified as an insulator from the time of its discovery until it was doped in the 1980s.
It is the hardest semiconductor
With a Young's modulus of 1000 GPa, diamond is by far the hardest semiconductor.
It can be made in the laboratory
Two techniques are used to synthesise it: HPHT (High Pressure High Temperature) or MPCVD (Microwave Plasma Chemical Vapour Deposition), which we use at DIAMFAB.
It can become more or less conductive
Diamond can be doped p-type with boron (B) or n-type with nitrogen (N) or phosphorus (P). At DIAMFAB, we master boron and nitrogen doping.
Implantation doping is not effective
That's why at DIAMFAB we do in-situ doping: we incorporate the doping species during growth.
It dissipates heat better than metals
Its thermal conductivity is around 2200 W/(m.K), 5 times greater than that of copper.
An unparalleled breakdown field
The breakdown field of diamond, 10 MV/cm, is 30 times greater than that of silicon, enabling diamond diodes and transistors to withstand voltages of several thousand volts in the off state.
High current thanks to fast charge carriers
Holes and electrons in diamond have mobilities of 2,000 cm²/V.s and 1,000 cm²/V.s respectively, which limits Joule effect losses when diamond diodes and transistors are in the on state.