New era for industrial diamond in advanced engineering applications

Citation

(2008), "New era for industrial diamond in advanced engineering applications", Sensor Review, Vol. 28 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2008.08728aab.005

New era for industrial diamond in advanced engineering applications

New era for industrial diamond in advanced engineering applications

Advances in industrial diamond are opening up a raft of products and applications based on the material's extreme properties. Element Six (E6) is leading the development work in new diamond products. As Christian Hultner, CEO of E6 points out, “The opportunities for growth in this area are huge and right now this side of the business is really in a venture capital phase.”

What has driven the new applications for diamond has been a number of technical breakthroughs in the manufacturing of diamond. These new manufactured forms of diamond have tremendous potential in a wide range of industries from electronics and medicine to waste management because diamond's combined properties outperform most other competing materials.

E6 has acquired the assets and intellectual property in order to fabricate a new material, ScD, a unique cemented diamond-silicon carbide composite. The company plans to manufacture this material at its industrial diamond production facility in South Africa. ScD has already proven its use in a broad range of applications such as a thermal management substrate for the higher powered silicon-based electronic devices such as processors used in network servers and industrial PCs. The diamond composite is also extremely wear-resistant and the manufacturing technology lends itself to making complex three dimensional shapes. The inert nature of silicon carbide and the bio-compatibility of diamond may lend itself to medical implant applications.

The shift into product development based on diamond's advanced engineering properties has come through a number of breakthroughs in diamond manufacturing processes. E6 is a leader in chemical vapour deposition (CVD) processes for diamond synthesis. The CVD process allows diamond to be manufactured in different shapes, sizes and thicknesses and to be coated onto substrates, allowing engineers to exploit the extreme properties of diamond. While many are aware that diamond is the hardest material on earth, its thermal, electronic and optical properties are equally impressive. Diamond is resistant to heat, radiation and acid attack, is biocompatible and boasts the best thermal conductivity of any material near room temperature. It is a good electrical insulator but can be doped like silicon to create semiconductor devices. Also, diamond has the highest figure of merit for power semiconductor applications and it is transparent to visible and infrared light. All told, diamond has 14 unique physical properties that can be combined to make it a versatile engineering material.

In addition, because the manufacturing process is controllable, the synthesised material can be tailored to a particular application at attractive costs. As Christopher Ogilvie Thompson points out, “Increasingly diamond will be sought for the combination of its properties and used in applications where other materials cannot perform.”

The success of the company's strategy is already apparent as E6 has doubled its turnover to US $400m/year over the past three years – three times the size of its nearest competitors. It is targeting a turnover of $1 billion by 2010, a figure it will achieve through organic growth and targeted acquisitions.

For further information, please visit the web site: www.e6.com