Diamond
Diamond is a material of many attractive properties. It has the highest thermal conductivity at
room temperature. And it is the hardest substance known to man, a very good electrical insulator,
inert to most chemical reagents and optical transparency from ultraviolet to infrared. With such a
wide range of exceptional properties, it has the potential applicability to semiconductors, optics,
microelectronics, heat sinks and mechanical coating applications (Very large scale integrated circuits
multiple chip module (MCM)compacts also use the thick diamond films as hea spreaders to increase
the packaging density). However one significant drawback to the current growth process is that
they are carried out at substrate temperature approximately 900oC or above. Substrates which melt
or undergo problematic phase changes at these temperatures cannot therefore be employed.
This limits the choice of the substrate material. Many technologically important substrate
materials (glass, plastic etc.) Therefore low temperature growth of diamond is very significant
for the development of practical growth process.
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I am very happy to announce that, I have made a breakthrough regarding the problem of high
substrate temperature required for the diamond growth. This happened as serendipity. While
I was doing some work to align the nanotubes developed by me (Sakthi- Yoshida method), by
changing a growth parameter of nanotubes, I found that diamonds are depositing on the substrates
which kept at substrate temperature 280oC same as used for nanotube growth. This accidental result
sprouted my interest in of diamond related field and I am doing some work nowadays to improve
the quality and deposition rate.
Representative publications
- Diamonds produced at very low temperature
Japanese patent number 143561 (2006)
D. Sakthi Kumar, Yasuhiko Yoshida
- Creation of diamonds at low substrate temperature (Poster)
D. Sakthi Kumar, Yasuhiko Yoshida
Third International Symposium on Bioscience and Nanotechnology
Miyazaki, Japan November 24 -25, 2005.
