April 25, 2006 – sp3 Diamond Technologies Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif., supplier of diamond film products, equipment and services, introduced its Model 650 hot filament CVD diamond deposition reactor.

The Model 650 is a fourth generation system which builds on the process automation and safety features of sp3’s earlier CVD reactors while adding fully integrated process control that allows unattended operation and external monitoring. The company calls it an economical system for the production of high quality diamond products. It can be configured to produce finely tuned deposition processes in ultra-smooth nano-crystalline or rougher micro- crystalline structures from submicron to 50-micron plus in thickness.

Predecessors of the machine have been used to grow thermal films on silicon wafers up to 300mm, silicon-diamond-silicon wafers successfully used as a base wafer for successful GaN growth, and nanocrystalline films for MEMS wafers. sp3’s Model 650 is intended to address more applications such as diamond on wafers in sizes up to 300mm, wear coatings, substrates for thermal management, amorphous silicon deposition for solar cells and other products, electrodes for water treatment and electrochemistry, passivation layers for semiconductor chucks, as well as cutting tools.