Key Breakthroughs in Laser Exfoliation Technology For Large-sized Diamonds

Recently, Xihu Instrument officially released the high-efficiency laser exfoliation technology for large-sized single crystal diamond at the 2nd International Optoelectronic Integration Technology Conference (COINT 2025), achieving breakthrough progress in core indicators such as loss control, processing efficiency, and process stability, providing key technical support for the industrialization of diamond semiconductor materials.

 

Diamond is known as the "ultimate semiconductor material", with material characteristics such as ultra wide bandgap, high thermal conductivity, high breakdown field strength, and high carrier saturation drift speed, making it have broad application prospects in fields such as heat sink, semiconductor, and optics. However, there are still many problems that need to be solved urgently in the industrialization of high-quality semiconductor diamond materials. Diamond belongs to superhard materials, and in order to achieve cutting and successful stripping of large-sized diamonds, traditional laser cutting techniques are not only costly but also inefficient.

 

In response to this pain point, Xihu Instrument has highly focused on developing a practical solution for efficient and low loss production of large-sized diamond substrates, achieving a dual breakthrough in efficiency and loss, significantly reducing material loss, and shortening processing time. Taking the processing of 1-inch diamond as an example, the comparison between this technical solution and traditional laser cutting technology is as follows:

 

 

Xihu Instrument has successfully solved the processing difficulties of new generation semiconductor materials such as diamond, and can provide laser stripping solutions compatible with up to 14 inch large-sized crystals, providing assistance for the industrialization and continuous cost reduction and efficiency improvement of the new generation of semiconductors, and contributing to the realization of independent and controllable semiconductor industry chain and the promotion of "Made in China" towards high-end development.

 

Laser ablation of diamond
Similar to laser invisible cutting of semiconductors, the laser is focused below the surface of the diamond sample for processing, forming a graphite modified layer that can be etched inside the diamond. The surface of the diamond remains basically unchanged, and then the graphite layer is etched through annealing, electrochemical etching, and other steps to achieve diamond exfoliation.

 

Femtosecond laser is widely used in high-precision and small-sized material processing due to its ultra short pulse width. In recent years, it has gradually been used to study diamond graphitization and microstructure processing.