| Abstract |
This project aims to develop high frequency, high quality factor Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) from Nanocrystalline Diamond (NCD). NCD offers superior performance to silicon for MEMS due to its extreme Young's modulus, but it is also compatible with silicon CMOS technologies, offering a key advantage over other potential MEMS materials. High performance NCD growth and planarization will be optimised for MEMS applications. The realisation of continuous, smooth, pin hole free NCD over large areas exhibiting bulk diamond properties will enable a multitude of applications at drastically reduced cost to currently available bulk diamond technologies. The resulting material will have applications outside the MEMS field such as in tribology, optical coatings, electrochemical electrodes (when doped with boron), heat spreading etc. The development of clean room processing technologies of NCD will allow the fabrication of new devices and result in new ideas exploiting this novel material. |
