Photoconductive diamond switches can be used in the power grid to control current and voltage surges
Based on this prior knowledge, the team at the LLNL investigated properties of synthetically produced diamonds that are of higher quality than those that occur naturally.
“We told ourselves ‘let’s take this high quality pure CVD diamond and irradiate it to see if we can adjust the wear period,'” Paulius Grivickas, lead author of an article, said in a media statement.
Grivickas explained that in photoconductive devices, the best combination of conductivity and frequency response is achieved by introducing impurities, which control the life of the carrier recombination. In diamonds, electron irradiation is a cheap and easy alternative to this approach, where recombination defects arise by knocking the lattice atoms out of place.
“Finally, we captured the understanding of which radiation defect is responsible for the life of the carrier and how the defect reacts under annealing at technologically relevant temperatures,” the researcher said.
Photoconductive diamond switches manufactured in this way can, for example, be used in the power grid to control current and voltage surges, which can fry equipment. “The current silicone switches are large and bulky, but the diamond-based one can do the same with a device that can fit at the tip of a finger,” Grivickas said.
The scientist pointed out that his findings are also applicable in energy delivery systems where the possibility exists of a megawatt-class radio frequency generation, which requires the optimization of diamonds’ high frequency response.