With cutting-edge industrial applications across telecommunications, defence, and artificial intelligence (AI) placing unprecedented demands on power and energy efficiency. enabling these technologies to reach their full potential requires new material solutions.
Synthetic diamond, thanks to its properties, including high breakdown field and high thermal conductivity, promises to become a key material platform but unlocking these disruptive industrial opportunities can only be realised if a reliable supply of wafer-scale SC diamond is available.
Element Six was the first company to build and develop a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) platform consistent with large area, uniform polycrystalline diamond growth up to 150 mm in diameter and, later, it pioneered electronic grade SC diamond development and production, commercialising its first SC product range in the 2000s.
Recently, E6 opened a world-class CVD facility in Gresham, Oregon, enabling sustainable, scale production of high-quality SC synthetic diamond products.
In parallel, Orbray HAS pioneered the developed a heteroepitaxial process to grow SC diamond on cost-efficient sapphire substrates, demonstrating milestone results of SC deposition up to 55 mm diameter.
The partnership between these companies will look to combine Orbray’s innovative approach to scaling SC CVD diamond with E6’s proven large area deposition system and expertise in making high-purity SC diamond, to deliver a reliable supply of high-quality, wafer-scale, single crystal diamond for key applications, including 6G wireless components, advanced power and RF electronics, sensing, thermal management, and quantum devices.
Through this strategic collaboration, Orbray and Element Six will look to produce wafer-scale high-quality SC diamond, expanding their core competency in diamond technology ahead of anticipated industrial opportunities.
Element Six’s patented technology and expertise in high-quality SC CVD diamond and large-area synthesis technology is already being exploited in atomic particle detection and researched in applications such as radio frequency (RF) transistors, quantum sensing, and quantum-secure communication.
Orbray’s heteroepitaxial sapphire substrate approach is advancing the research and development of larger SC wafer-scale diamond substrates, and simultaneously, production of heteroepitaxial SC CVD diamond for novel industrial applications.
By combining these capabilities, the partnership between Element Six and Orbray aims to deliver SC diamond wafer technology at sizes and levels of quality beyond what is possible today.
Siobhán Duffy, CEO at Element Six, said, “This strategic collaboration will allow us to combine our respective core competencies towards the development of a world’s first: the highest quality wafer-scale single crystal synthetic diamond.”
