electric charge carrier<\/a> mobility, high breakdown strength and ultra-wide bandgap. Bandgap is a key property in semi-conductor, and wide bandgap allows operation of high-power or high-frequency devices. “That’s why diamond can be considered as ‘Mount Everest’ of electronic materials, possessing all these excellent properties,” Dr Lu added.<\/p>\nThe large bandgap and tight crystal structure of diamond make it difficult to modulate the semi-conductors’ electronic properties during production, hence hampering the diamond’s industrial application in electronic and optoelectronic devices. A potential alternative uses \u2018strain engineering\u2019 to apply very large lattice strain, to change the electronic band structure and associated functional properties of the diamond, which was considered impossible due to its extremely high hardness.<\/p>\n
In 2018, Dr Lu and his collaborators discovered that nanoscale diamonds can be elastically bent with large local strain. This discovery suggests the change of physical properties in diamond through elastic strain engineering can be possible. Based on this, the latest study showed how this phenomenon can be utilised for developing functional diamond devices.<\/p>\n
The impact of elastic straining on diamonds<\/h3>\n The team then performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations to estimate the impact of elastic straining from 0 to 12% on the diamond’s electronic properties. The simulation results indicated that the bandgap of diamond generally decreased as the tensile strain increased, with the largest bandgap reduction rate down from about 5 eV to 3 eV at around 9% strain along a specific crystalline orientation. The team performed an electron energy-loss spectroscopy analysis on a pre-strained diamond sample and verified this bandgap decreasing trend.<\/p>\n
Their calculation results also showed that the bandgap could change from indirect to direct with the tensile strains larger than 9% along another crystalline orientation. Direct bandgap in semi-conductor means an electron can directly emit a photon, allowing many optoelectronic applications with higher efficiency.<\/p>\n
These findings are an early step in achieving deep elastic strain engineering of microfabricated diamonds. By nanomechanical approach, the team demonstrated that the diamond’s band structure can be changed, and more importantly, these changes can be continuous and reversible, allowing different applications, from micro\/nanoelectromechanical systems, strain-engineered transistors, to novel optoelectronic and quantum technologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scientists demonstrate the tensile elastic straining of diamonds to be used in microelectronics, photonics, and quantum information technologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[766,24429],"tags":[833],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The tensile elastic straining of diamonds could result in the next-generation microelectronics<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n