Along with being a "girl's best friend," diamonds also have remarkable¹ properties that could make them ideal semiconductors³. This is welcome news for electronics; semiconductors are needed to meet the rising demand for more efficient electronics that deliver and convert power. The thirst for electronics is unlikely to cease and almost every appliance or device requires a suite⁴ of electronics that transfer, convert and control power. Now, researchers have taken an important step toward that technology with a new way to dope single crystals of diamonds, a crucial process for building electronic devices.

 

"We need the devices to manipulate the power in the way that we want," said Zhengqiang (Jack) Ma, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He and his colleagues describe their new method in the Journal of Applied⁵ Physics, from AIP Publishing. 

 

For power electronics, diamonds could serve as the perfect material. They are thermally⁶ conductive, which means diamond-based devices would dissipate heat quickly and easily, foregoing the need for bulky and expensive methods for cooling. Diamond can also handle high voltages and power. Electrical currents also flow through diamonds quickly, meaning the material would make for energy efficient devices.

 

But among the biggest challenges to making diamond-based devices is doping, a process in which other elements are integrated into the semiconductor² to change its properties. Because of diamond's rigid⁷ crystalline structure, doping is difficult. 

 

Currently, you can dope diamond by coating the crystal with boron and heating it to 1450 degrees Celsius⁸. But it's difficult to remove the boron coating at the end. This method only works on diamonds consisting of multiple crystals stuck together. Because such polydiamonds have irregularities between the crystals, single-crystals would be superior semiconductors.

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