Diamond is regarded as the preferred material for electronic and photonic applications due to its excellent physical and chemical properties. However, despite the great efforts made in the past decades, the widespread application of ultrathin diamond films has not yet been realized, and their large-scale production still faces many challenges.
A collaborative research team composed of Assistant Professor Kwai Hei Li from the School of Microelectronics at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Researcher Qi Wang from the Dongguan Institute of Optoelectronics at Peking University, along with Professor Yuan Lin and Associate Professor Zhiqin Chu from the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has achieved substantial advancements in the preparation and application of diamond thin film materials.
The team successfully developed a method for the mass production of large, ultra-smooth, and ultra-flexible diamond films, representing a significant milestone in the field of materials science and paving the way for the commercialization of diamond films.
The research results were published in Nature, titled “Scalable production of ultra-flat and ultra-flexible diamond membrane”.
In this study, the researchers successfully developed a method of cutting the edges and then peeling them with adhesive tapes, which enables us to efficiently prepare large-area (2-inch wafers), ultra-thin (sub-micron thickness), ultra-flat (surface roughness below nanometer), and ultra-flexible (can be bent by 360°) diamond films. The high-quality films prepared are not only flat and easy to process at the micro- and nanoscale, but also have ultra-flexible properties that enable them to be directly applied to elastic strain engineering and deformation sensing applications, which are not possible with traditional thicker diamond films.
Through systematic experimental and theoretical studies, the team further confirmed that the quality of the exfoliated film is closely related to the exfoliation angle and film thickness, and that large-area and intact diamond films can be stably prepared within the optimized operating parameters. This technological innovation in the preparation of diamond films provides a practical path for the large-scale production of high-quality diamond films, which is expected to accelerate the commercialization of diamond materials in electronics, photonics, and other related fields.
Dr. Jixiang Jing from HKU, a former research assistant in Kwai Hei Li’s group, is the first author of the paper. He has been a visiting student/scholar in the group since 2020. Qi Wang, Kwai Hei Li, Yuan Lin, and Zhiqin Chu serve as the corresponding authors.
Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08218-x
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