The Diamond Age

Why you should go to Penn State

Nanotechnology School
Growing a Diamond Crystal
Through the Catalyst of a
Nanofabrication Facility
 What We Have
• A Nanofabrication Program!
– Through Penn State University
• Very intelligent, hard working people
• Tools
• Options, the advantage of knowledge
• Facility??
• A Drive to Get on Top
 Nanofabrication Program
• Offered to the science majors of California
University
• 1 Semester long – 18 credits
• Penn State University, State College
• Same tuition as Cal U
• However they pay for your room and board
• Experience and confidence
 Get on Top
• Every student should attend Nanofabrication school
• NSF provides funding to the NMT Partnership
• To date, PASSHE schools have sent 40 students to the
semester and $500,000 this year for the purchase of
laboratory equipment (March 2005)
• Six courses that are taught in the $33 million
nanofabrication cleanroom facility in the Research
Park at Penn State
• 14 Pennsylvania community colleges, and the
Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education
(PASSHE).
 The Chemistry and Physics Dept.
• Dr. Dieterle
• Dr. Gould
• Dr. Lee
• Dr. Price
• Dr. Sezer
• Dr. Signeti
• Dr. Woznack
 Cal U’s Nanofabrication Tools
• Atomic Force Microscope
• Backside lit optical Microscope
• Mega/Ultrasonic Cleaner
• Atomic Absorption
• UV/Vis spectrometer
• Raman Spectrometer
• Microfluidic Devices
• Balances
 Options to Pick From
• The technology is maturing
• Companies are buying new tools
• Know what you want
• Only get what is needed
• Plan Ahead
• No wasted time, space, money
 Facility
• California University of Pennsylvania
• New Science Hall – a great start
• Class 10,000 clean room – Modified lab room
• Nanolab can be build apon and then a
diamond can be grown
– Plan, requisition,
QUESTIONS?
What We Need to Build a Diamond
• A New Science FACILITY
• A Few More Tools
• A Little More Knowledge/Understanding
• A Man with a Plan
 Facility
• A “New Science Hall”
• Nanofabrication built in
• Use of New Science
during construction
• Use your resources
– Chemistry and Physics
Professors
• Green Building
• Location Location
Location
 The Tools of the 21 Century
st

• AFM
• Evaporator
• Ellipsometer
• Sputter Coater
• Plasma Etcher
• Mass Spectrometer
• Ion Implanter
• Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition
 A Little More Knowledge About
DIAMONDS
• The word "diamond" comes from the ancient
Greek adamas, meaning invincible.
• Hardest substance known to man
– Harder Diamonds CRC
• Best Thermoconductivity of any substance
– 5 x better than silver or copper >30 W/cm·K
• Lower coefficient of thermal expansion than
Pyrex glass [CRC]
• a coefficient of friction close to that of Teflon
 Little More Knowledge about
Diamonds
• Highest Melting Point on periodic table
• Very high scratch resistance
• Expensive
• Last Forever
• ~One Billion years old
– Brought to surface by underground volcano leaving rock called
kimberlite studded with gems
• At lower temperatures conductivity becomes even better as
its Fermi electrons can match the phononic normal transport
mode near the Debye point,[16] and transport heat more
swiftly, to reach ~800 W/cm·K at 100 K (12C enriched
diamond)[15]
 Tetrahedral Structure
Pure Carbon
All covalent bonds @ ??? bond
Vacant Octahedral Hole
• In 2006, more than 75,000 pounds were produced
worldwide
• The largest diamond so far found in the universe is
the size of a small planet and located 50 light-years
away in the constellation Centaurus. Astronomers
with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics
– discovered the gigantic stone a few years ago, and they
believe the 2,500-mile-wide diamond once served as the
heart of a star. It's ten billion trillion trillion carats. The
astronomers named it Lucy in honor of the Beatles' song
"Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/82
05//8205diamonds.html
• Before the 1930s, the gems of choice for
engagement rings included opals, rubies, and
sapphires. But in the 1940s, De Beers--the
South African mining firm that controls the
majority of the world's diamond supply--
introduced "A Diamond Is Forever." The
success of this campaign turned diamond into
the symbol of eternal love and dramatically
increased demand for the gems.
 Growth of Diamonds
• In 1950’s diamonds were starting to be forged
out of graphite at 2,500 F and 55,000 atm
– High Pressure High Temperature
– Only small grits of diamond formed
– Used on tips of blades and drills
• In the late 1960’s diamond was formed at low
pressures(1atm) from gas phase
 Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD)
• Done under lower pressures
• Uses a carbon source of course
– Hydrocarbon fuels used; methane, ethylene,
propylene and methyl acetylene.
• Use different amount of other gases
• Energy to make a plasma includes hot
filaments, microwaves and arc discharges
[BOOK]
• Grow diamonds over large areas
 CVD
• LET IT RAIN To make diamond by
chemical vapor deposition,
hydrogen gas and methane are
flowed through a chamber
containing a substrate. Heat or a
microwave-generated plasma is
used to split hydrogen gas into
atomic hydrogen, which then
reacts with methane to give
methyl radical and hydrogen gas.
The carbon-containing radical
species eventually deposit as
diamond onto the substrate.
 CVD
• Problems
– Diamond is not the thermodynamic equlibrium
structure carbon likes to take under low
temperature
• Solution
– Back side heating by helium
 Synthetic Diamonds
• Usually produced by High Temp High Pressure
process
• Simulants
– Cubic Zirconia
• Coating can be put onto the diamond to enhance
– Raman Spectroscopy can identify this easily
– Moissanite (introduced in 1998)
• Silicon carbide with similar thermo conductivity
• Perfect diamonds at the crystal lattice
structure do not exist in the laboratory or
naturally
 A diamond is forever
• This is actually not true because a diamonds
are not as stable as graphite so they decay
they are thermodynamically favorable
δH = −2 kJ / mol
• They are metastable
• They will not decay under normal conditions
(time dependent)
 Impurities in Diamonds
• A Beautiful thing
– just a little N, B, P, S, Al, Mg, K…
• Yellow
• Blues
• Pinks
• Reds
ALL VERY VALUABLE
ALL just a few extra chemicals added to the system
 Semiconductor Technology
• Such diamond has a large band gap--meaning that the
energy required to free an electron so it can move through
the diamond lattice is high--and therefore is an excellent
electrical insulator. But replacing some of the carbon atoms
in the diamond lattice with boron--an impurity that
produces the pretty blue color in some rare diamonds,
including the famed Hope Diamond--transforms diamond
into a p-type semiconductor. That's because boron has only
three outer-shell electrons and can make only three of four
bonds that carbon normally does in the diamond lattice.
The result is a missing electron or "hole" that can move
freely through the crystal, allowing the diamond to conduct
positive charge.
• A slow, tedious version of the low-pressure CVD process was first
documented in 1952 by William G. Eversole of Union Carbide. Back
then, "there was a great deal of skepticism that one could grow
diamond at low pressures because diamond is thermodynamically
unstable with respect to graphite," recalls John C. Angus, professor
of chemical engineering at Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland. "Many people said that growth of diamond at low
pressure violated the second law of thermodynamics. You were
thought to be a fool or a fraud if you proposed this," he says.
• Hydrogen is the key to growing diamond and not graphite under
these conditions, Angus' early work showed. At the surface, the
carbon lattice of diamond is decorated with "dangling bonds" that
can potentially cross-link to reorganize the surface into more stable
graphite. Capping these bonds with hydrogen prevents graphite
formation and generates reactive surface sites for attachment of
carbon radicals.