From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sun Aug 04 2002 - 12:00:58 MDT
http://www.dynamicsilicon.com/MemsMonth.htm
MEMS of the Month
<<Diamonds
Diamonds. They may be a girl's best friend, but now, with revolutionary new
technology from Argonne National Laboratory, they are becoming a MEMS' best
friend as well. Current applications for MEMS are made almost exclusively
from silicon, and can be limited because the material's poor friction and
wear properties make it unsuitable for some micro-motors, pumps, and other
micromachines with fast-moving parts. Gears assembled into a microscopic
motor would spin at something like 400,000 revolutions per minute to create
enough torque to perform mechanical work such as pumping, thus wearing a
silicon gear out in only a few minutes.
Argonne's new method for growing the world's purest smoothest diamond
films-"ultra-nanocrystalline diamond film"-could, by overcoming this problem,
provide the material breakthrough needed to push the fledgeling field of
micromachines into the commercial mainstream. David Gruen, diamond-film
technology inventor, and his team, have already made a freestanding tube and
a strain gauge (caliper) of pure diamond film. Their preliminary experiments
suggest that diamond films may be 1,000 times more wear resistant than
silicon. >>
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