Single diamond sheets offer semiconductors speed up

BOFFINS AT the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have grown single crystals into thin flat sheets suitable for acting as semiconductor substrates.

If the technique is perfected, the diamond sheets could replace silicon substrates and provide faster and more efficient semiconductors.

According to the Nikkei Business Daily, prototype sheets the institute has grown are half a millimetre thick and one centimetre square. They want to create larger sizes but the newspaper says that the existing plates can be detached from the seed and no substrate slicing is needed.

The seed crystal can be used again and again because a thin film of graphite is deposited on the seed and after the sheet is made can be dissolved and the seed can be a fresh seed. µ

L'INQ
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