How to cultivate diamond to meet the needs of semiconductor industry

Release Time：

2022-07-28

With the continuous development of semiconductor technology, the demand for high-performance materials is becoming more and more urgent. As an excellent wide band gap semiconductor material, diamond has excellent mechanical, thermal, acoustic, optical and electrical properties, which makes it widely concerned in the cutting-edge fields of high technology, especially in electronic technology, and is recognized as a promising new semiconductor material. Based on these advantages, wide band gap semiconductors, especially diamond, have extensive and irreplaceable application advantages and prospects under high frequency and high pressure conditions.

Application of Diamond in Semiconductor Industry

The following are the common applications of diamond in the semiconductor industry:

1. High power power electronic devices

Diamond semiconductor material has a band gap of 5.47 eV, and its thermal conductivity is the highest among known semiconductor materials, so it can meet the requirements of high power, strong electric field and radiation resistance in the future, and is an ideal material for making power semiconductor devices.

2. Deep ultraviolet detectors and high-energy particle detectors

In the field of deep ultraviolet optoelectronics, diamond has inherent advantages in deep ultraviolet detectors and high-energy particle detectors under extreme conditions because of its large band gap, high-temperature operation and radiation resistance. It is also based on the above reasons, and the unresolved diamond doping problem can be avoided in the process, so the diamond detector is the only product category related to the semiconductor diamond device that is relatively mature and has been commercialized.

3. Substrate materials

Diamond can also be used as the substrate of GaN power devices to help them dissipate heat and achieve higher frequency and power. Since 2008, the European Union has invested funds to promote chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to grow diamonds on the back of GaN devices. Subsequently, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense and the Naval Research Office invested a lot of money, and United universities (Bristol University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford, etc.) and semiconductor companies (Element Six, Raytheon, Qorvo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc.) vigorously promoted the development of diamond-based GaN devices. However, due to the high price, the application of gallium nitride devices with diamond substrate is limited to the fields of national defense and aerospace.

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Laws, regulations and industrial policies mainly involved in synthetic diamond industry