Element Six and Orbray partner to deliver the world's highest quality wafer-scale single crystal synthetic diamond

GRESHAM, Ore. and TOKYO, June 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Element Six (E6) and Orbray, both world leaders in high-performing advanced materials, today announced a strategic collaboration to deliver the world's highest quality wafer-scale single crystal (SC) synthetic diamond.

Tomorrow's cutting-edge industrial applications across telecommunications, defense, and artificial intelligence (AI) will place unprecedented demands on power and energy efficiency.  Enabling these technologies to reach their full potential requires novel material solutions.

Synthetic diamond, thanks to its superlative properties, including high breakdown field and high thermal conductivity, is the ultimate answer, promising to become the go-to material platform for the next technological century. However, unlocking these disruptive industrial opportunities can only be realised if a reliable supply of wafer-scale SC diamond is available.

Element Six was the first company to build and develop a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) platform consistent with large area, uniform polycrystalline diamond growth up to 150 mm in diameter and, later, pioneering electronic grade SC diamond development and production, commercializing its first SC product range in the 2000s. Recently, E6 opened a world-class CVD facility in Gresham, Oregon, enabling sustainable, scale production of high-quality SC synthetic diamond products.

In parallel, Orbray pioneered the development of a unique heteroepitaxial process to grow SC diamond on cost-efficient sapphire substrates, demonstrating milestone results of SC deposition up to 55 mm diameter.

The partnership between these pioneering companies will combine Orbray's innovative approach to scaling SC CVD diamond with E6's proven large area deposition system and  expertise in making high-purity SC diamond, to deliver a reliable supply of high-quality, wafer-scale, single crystal diamond for key applications, including 6G wireless components, advanced power and RF electronics, sensing, thermal management, and quantum devices.

Through this strategic collaboration, Orbray and Element Six will work together to produce wafer-scale high-quality SC diamond, expanding their core competency in diamond technology ahead of anticipated industrial opportunities.

Element Six's patented technology and expertise in high-quality SC CVD diamond and large-area synthesis technology is already being exploited in atomic particle detection and researched in novel applications such as radio frequency (RF) transistors, quantum sensing, and quantum-secure communication. Orbray's innovative heteroepitaxial sapphire substrate approach is advancing the research and development of larger SC wafer-scale diamond substrates, and simultaneously, production of heteroepitaxial SC CVD diamond for novel industrial applications. As a result, by combining these unique capabilities, the partnership between Element Six and Orbray is poised to deliver SC diamond wafer technology at sizes and levels of quality beyond what is possible today.

Ms. Riyako Namiki, President and CEO at Orbray, said:

"The strategic collaboration between Element Six and Orbray represents the next milestone to unlock a new era of single-crystal diamond applications, delivering unprecedented competitive advantage and new heights of performance to an ever-growing range of global customers."

Through its world-leading range of disruptive single-crystal, diamond-enabled solutions, Element Six has already accelerated key advances in a wide range of novel applications, enabling significant milestones such as the identification of Higg's boson and the advancement of optics technology for metrology in the pharmaceutical industry.

Siobhán Duffy, CEO at Element Six, said:

"Both Element Six and Orbray have many distinctive traits in common: a heritage of excellence and trust, spanning over eight decades, as well as a drive for innovation and a desire to push the boundaries of technology to achieve ever-better solutions that can benefit the world. 

"This strategic collaboration will allow us to combine our respective core competencies towards the development of a world's first: the highest quality wafer-scale single crystal synthetic diamond."         

About Element Six

Element Six, part of the De Beers Group, is a world-leader in the design, development and production of synthetic diamond advanced material solutions. The company operates worldwide with primary manufacturing facilities in US, UK, Ireland, Germany, and South Africa.

For over seventy years, Element Six has harnessed the extreme properties of synthetic diamond to open up new possibilities in areas such as photonics, acoustics, power transmission, water treatment, thermal management and sensors. The company's advanced material solutions are used in a wide rage of applications across multiple industries including manufacturing in the automotive and consumer electronics industries, cutting and drilling in the oil and gas industry, and in components for mining, road, construction and agriculture applications.

About Orbray Co., Ltd.  

Head office: Tokyo, Japan

Founded in 1939 with the manufacture of jewel bearings for electric meters. With jewel processing technology (cutting, grinding, and polishing) as its core technology, the company has continued to develop its leading-edge technology to create a variety of products. It currently manufactures and sells precision jewel parts, DC coreless motors, fiber optic components, and medical devices. In particular, Orbray has achieved the world's most advanced results in the technology for growing synthetic diamond and sapphire.