New Foundation for Nanostructures: Scientists Combine Glass and Synthetic Diamond
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Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have fabricated a novel glass and synthetic diamond foundation that can be used to create miniscule micro- and nanostructures. This new substrate is low cost and leaves minimal waste, the researchers say, in a study published in Diamond and Related Materials.
"We've spent the last couple of decades throwing away plastics," said Stoffel Janssens, the first author of the study, and a member of OIST's Mathematics, Mechanics, and Materials Unit. "With sustainable materials like diamond and glass, we're minimizing negative environmental impacts."
Current processes in place for micro- and nanodevice fabrication can be costly and inefficient. Synthetic diamond, which has the same chemical structure as natural diamond, is resilient, low-cost and sustainable, and glass is versatile and electrically insulating; technologies that combine the two are promising.
The researchers made their foundation using glass etching, a process that relies on acid to reduce a glass slab to a thickness of 50 micrometers (about the length of a typical cell in the human body). Janssens and his collaborators, Professor Eliot Fried, David Vizquez-Corti(C)s, Alessandro Giussani, and James Kwiecinski, used a laser to drill cavities, approximately 40 micrometers in diameter and depth, into one side of the glass slab.
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