A Japanese agency with its roots within the jewellery business, working alongside tutorial researchers, has developed a brand new solution to mass produce 2-inch diamond wafers. Importantly, these ‘Kenzan Diamonds’ are of excessive sufficient purity to be helpful in functions equivalent to quantum computing. In accordance with the supply, a single one in all these 2-inch diamond wafers can be utilized to retailer the equal of a billion Blu-Ray discs.
Adamant Namiki Precision Jewellery Co., Ltd collaborated on this diamond wafer mass manufacturing know-how with Saga College in Kyushu. Earlier diamond wafers with the requisite purity for quantum computing functions have been severely restricted in dimension. In accordance with the supply, it beforehand wasn’t attainable to develop them bigger than a 4mm sq.. Earlier makes an attempt to develop 2-inch wafers (~55mm diameter) resulted in ranges of nitrogen impurities that rendered the wafers of little or no use to the computing business.
The mass manufacturing breakthrough seems to return from the appliance of following approach. Diamonds are grown on a sapphire substrate coated with an iridium movie, utilizing the precept of ‘step circulate progress’, reasonably than utilizing diamond micro-needle seeding. The substrates utilized by the brand new approach and the stepped construction enable the expansion of the diamond beneath excessive temperatures and pressures, with none stress cracks upon cool-down. This technique of wafer progress additionally minimizes the absorption of nitrogen, so it’s beneath 3 billionths of a p.c.
The dimensions and low-nitrogen nature of the brand new wafers makes them helpful for quantum storage functions. Utilizing a 2-inch diamond wafer for quantum storage facilitates the storing of as much as a billion Blu-Ray discs full of information. It is usually equal to the quantity of information transmitted by cellular networks in a typical day. From our calculations, this implies a single diamond disc can retailer as much as 25 Exabytes of information.
Adamant Namiki Precision Jewellery plans to commercialize Kenzan Diamond wafers in 2023. It’s already working of the event of 4-inch diamond wafers.
Diamonds have some uniquely interesting qualities for electronics functions. Final month we reported on one other breakthrough by Japanese scientists, who used diamonds to create transistors with nice enchantment for low-loss energy conversion and high-speed communication parts.