Diamond Foundry Inc (DF) USA has created the world’s first single-crystal diamond wafer, as it says below:
“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…”
(Picture Source: Diamond Foundry www.DF.com)
In DF’s 30-year master plan, it will “Introduce single-crystal diamond wafers and put a diamond behind every chip.” in 2023+.
In recent years, synthetic diamond by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) method has been favored by worldwide customers. Compared with monocrystalline HPHT diamond, CVD diamond has higher purity, lower price, and custom sizes, it has gradually gained market recognition.
CVD single crystal diamond has extremely high hardness, low friction coefficient, good wear resistance, which is 50 to 100 times higher than that of cemented carbide, good thermal conductivity, low thermal expansion coefficient, and small thermal deformation.
CVD diamond is very suitable for precision and ultra-precision machining. The ultra-high precision tools with single crystal CVD diamond can achieve contour accuracy better than 50 nanometers. CVD diamonds are widely used in manufacturing and processing artificial jewelry such as lab-grown-diamond, gold, silver, contact lens, optical windows, semiconductor devices, and key technical fields such as national defense and aerospace.