CVD Diamond: A New and Promising Material

Abstract

The outstanding properties of diamond, including its hardness, chemical inertness, good optical transparency and high thermal conductivity, are well known. The revolutionary finding that diamond can be synthesized at low pressure by the Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) method has opened up new fields of technical applications for this interesting material. There exist considerable differences, both with respect to manufacturing and to applications, between low-pressure (CVD) synthetic diamond and High-Pressure/High-Temperature (HPHT) synthetic diamond. The synthesis of CVD diamond can be performed by a variety of methods using conventional laboratory equipment (Chaps. 2–8), while the synthesis of HPHT diamond requires special industrial equipment which is used by very few companies. Many quite different applications for CVD diamond are the object of intensive research and some applications (e.g. heat spreaders) have entered the market (Chaps. 9–17); in contrast, the diamond from HPHT synthesis is almost exclusively used as grit for mechanical applications. Of special interest are market niches, where CVD diamond offers “enabling technologies“ that is the manufacturing of new products such as optical and X-ray windows, special coatings and electronic devices. Only low-pressure synthesis can provide diamond in the shape of wafers and films. The unique possibility of growing layered diamond structures using CVD technology is exploited for adhesion layers on metal tools (Chap. 12) or for δ-doping in electronic devices (Chap. 17).