Berkshire-based Diamond Microwave Devices (DMD) has placed a contract with the London Centre for Nanotechnology to study diamond’s electronic properties.

"Diamond offers enormous potential for high performance devices, but brings with it some challenges that are new to the electronics sector," said Richard Jackman, who will lead the research at the Centre, part of University College London.

"The experience within DMD, when allied to the capabilities of the London Centre for Nanotechnology, makes this collaboration unique in the world."

The contract is to investigate mobility of delta doped material, where a heavily-doped layer provides carriers to a nearby intrinsic semiconductor.

At the same time, DMD has received a contract from European missile firm MBDA for the development of a transistor based on single crystal synthetic
diamond.

"The achievement of semiconductor operation in diamond offers a new class of thermally robust microwave components," said an MBDA spokesman. "It provides the potential to reduce the cost of ownership and improve the reliability of RF systems."

This contract also involves delta layers, proposed for RF devices including mesfets (metal semiconductor FETs).

"The work will be to investigate the mobility of delta-doped chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond and to apply the results within a 2D physical model for a diamond transistor," said DMD general manager Richard Lang.

Diamond can be p-doped, but so far no useful n-dopant has been found. It is for this reason that researchers cannot make conventional bipolar transistors, and are constrained to metal-semiconductor devices like mesfets. As such there is considerable effort world wide to find other useful structures that require no n-doping.

Both of the DMD contracts have been made possible by funding from the MoD's Research Acquisition Organisation.

"The funding is within the Electronics Systems Research programme that is responsible underpinning technologies in electronic and opto-electronic systems that are used throughout MoD," said DMD.