Machining diamond

[Jim Stewart <jstewart@jlab.org>]

Dear Tagger

While at BNL I spoke with Triveni Rao about thinning diamond. She is the
head of the laser source group and is working on a high current electron
source. For this she needs 1cm diameter 30um thick diamond wafers.
This means they are also looking for ways to thin diamond wafers. They
tried reactive ion etching but this took a very long time and was
expensive. They are now looking into ablating the diamond with an excimer
laser. They have ordered a new laser and will start testing soon. She
would be interested in collaboration on developing techniques to hold the
samples.

Does anyone know what surface flatness and roughness we would require? An
interesting possibility, in the event that they succeed in thinning the
diamond, would be to leave the outside of the sample thick and then thin
the middle. This would leave a strong structural support around the edge
of the sample and hopefully keep the diamond surface flat.

How thick are the wires used to hold the diamonds?

Hope this is interesting.

Jim