2020/12/31 by Chaoqun Dang, Jyh‐Pin Chou, Bing Dai +11 · 3 citations
Materials Science · Engineering · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Diamond and Carbon-based Materials Research #Metal and Thin Film Mechanics #High-pressure geophysics and materials
paper · doi:10.1126/science.abc4174
openalex publication_date 2020/12/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Diamond is not only the hardest material in nature, but is also an extreme electronic material with an ultrawide bandgap, exceptional carrier mobilities, and thermal conductivity. Straining diamond can push such extreme figures of merit for device applications. We microfabricated single-crystalline diamond bridge structures with ~1 micrometer length by ~100 nanometer width and achieved sample-wide uniform elastic strains under uniaxial tensile loading along the [100], [101], and [111] directions at room temperature. We also demonstrated deep elastic straining of diamond microbridge arrays. The ultralarge, highly controllable elastic strains can fundamentally change the bulk band structures of diamond, including a substantial calculated bandgap reduction as much as ~2 electron volts. Our demonstration highlights the immense application potential of deep elastic strain engineering for photonics, electronics, and quantum information technologies.