As Rough&Polished recently reported, Russian scientists and engineers set a new record in the fall of 2024 when New Diamond Technology (NDT) company, jointly with NPK (Scientific and Production Complex) Almaz, created the world’s largest nitrogen-free single crystal diamond (colorless, type IIa) weighing 70.72 carats.
Alexander Kolyadin, CEO of NPK Almaz-Karabanovo told Rough&Polished about the plans of the Almaz-Karabanovo he runs (founded by St. Petersburg-based NPK Almaz) to produce lab-grown diamonds in the town of Karabanovo, the Vladimir Region, about the Diamond Valley project in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) called “Vladimir”, and about the manufacturing of diamond-based products for electronics industry.
What do you think about the current situation in the market of LGDs - laboratory-grown single crystal rough diamonds - and polished diamonds made from them?
In my opinion, the term “LGD” - laboratory-grown diamonds - is obsolete and incorrect because over a decade of developing this area, laboratory conditions for growing diamond crystals by both the HPHT and CVD methods have grown into dozens of large-scale factories with hundreds to several thousand presses and plants. Therefore, it would be correct to change the name to ‘grown diamonds’, or, to be more specific, ‘HPHT diamonds’ or ‘CVD diamonds’.
The tremendous upgrowth of the industry of creating rough diamonds and polished diamonds made from them has gone through rather difficult key development stages in a serious struggle with the industry of natural rough and polished diamonds. Of course we were among those who experienced all the difficulties of this market development - from negative bias towards grown diamonds expressed by leading mining companies and famous jewelry brands to the patent struggle. Thanks to enthusiasts of grown diamonds like Tamazi Khikhinashvili (INREAL Ltd, NDT LLC, St. Petersburg) and Vishal Mehta (IIa Technologies Pte. Ltd, Singapore), the International Grown Diamond Association (IGDA) was founded in 2015. Today, IGDA unites most companies working in this industry.
Today, the entire volume of synthesized diamonds should be divided into three independent segments. The first segment, and most voluminous, is the synthesis of powders and sintering of polycrystals from them, as well as the manufacturing of diamond abrasives and blade tools. The diamond powder production in China was estimated at 17 bn carats in 2023. The second segment is growing crystals for the jewelry industry. According to the results for 2023, the global output of grown gem-quality diamonds is 10 percent of the natural diamond production.
The third segment, the most complex and promising, is the growing of electronic-quality diamond crystals for manufacturing the electronic components and various sensors for the electronic, optical industry, mechanical engineering, space, energy, medical, and other industries.
It should be noted that, according to the analytical agency Virtue Market research, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the lab-grown diamond industry is expected to be 12.3 percent during 2024 to 2030, and from $151 mn to $342 mn by value.
Such intensive development of the lab-grown diamond industry in a fairly short period of time (in 10 years) resulted in the saturation of the jewelry market and a decline in the price for [lab-grown] diamonds to an unprecedented level: a 99-percent discount from the price for natural diamonds (according to Rapaport). In this regard, some factories growing gem-quality diamonds begin to stop growing diamond crystals, since polished diamond production often becomes unprofitable.
What is happening at the NDT company?
The NDT company continues to achieve record results in growing large and extra-large HPHT diamonds, producing up to 230 carats per month per each press in two cycles using the multi-seed method, with the average crystal size being over 25 carats, which has not yet been achieved by any other diamond growing company.
It should be noted that the company produces several large-size (over 10.8 carats) diamond crystals every day, an output unachievable for natural diamond mining companies. At the same time, the company’s technological approaches for HPHT growing are becoming increasingly ‘electronic’. The company faces a serious task of transferring the technologies used in growing gem-quality crystals to growing electronic-quality diamond crystals.
How are single crystal diamonds used in new technologies? What trends and prospects can you single out?
As it is known, HPHT diamond crystals with their good crystal lattice, minimal dislocation density, absence or minimal amount of stress have high levels of uncontrolled background impurities in crystals due to low purity of the container parts’ materials. On the contrary, the situation is opposite in CVD crystals: dislocation density is high, stress level is high, but impurity level is minimal due to the possibility to work with chemically pure gases.
To create highly efficient devices with the parameters that couldn’t be achieved previously, it is necessary for these technologies to help each other.
However, the introduction of the diamond as a next-generation material to be used in electronics is accompanied by a number of problems.
What are the problems exactly?
These are the problems associated with its still high cost, difficulties in processing, lack of diamond single crystal substrates larger than 3/4 inch, lack of effective methods for doping diamonds, as well as with achieving the required level of a charge carrier concentration at room temperature due to the significant energetic depth of electrically active impurities. The problem is the impossible cost-effective use of traditional equipment for manufacturing electronic components on substrates larger than two inches. As it is known, there is already equipment for processing substrates made of traditional semiconductor materials up to 18 inches in size (Disco, Japan).
A number of scientific and technological centers in America, England, Germany, Australia (E6, MIT, DiamFab, Quantum Brilliance, and others), have made good progress in achieving extreme parameters for devices using grown diamonds while performing research and development work on the use of grown diamonds, and accordingly, they are moving to the experimental design work through introducing grown diamonds into the industry.
The most widespread introduction of diamonds is in heat-pipe elements, since diamond has the highest thermal conductivity, exceeding the thermal conductivity of copper by 4 times. The use of diamonds as heat sinks makes it possible even for traditional semiconductor materials to increase the reliable and stable operation of the ECB (electronic component base) at maximum operating modes of electronic devices. By the way, gem-quality diamonds can be effectively used as heat sinks.
During 2023-24, diamond is actively introduced into quantum sensors based on the so-called nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamonds, so quantum computers, quantum magnetometers and gyroscopes are manufactured, and there are achievements in laser generation based on NV centers in diamonds.
Tell us about the Diamond Valley project and the NPK Almaz-Karabanovo, which you head? What will be produced?
The Diamond Valley project was launched at our initiative together with A. A. Avdeyev, Governor of the Vladimir Region, and was supported by M. V. Mishustin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, in 2022, which resulted in establishing the Special Economic Zone ‘Vladimir’ in the town of Karabanovo, the Vladimir Region.
The project was based on two materials: silicon carbide and diamond. As it is known, silicon carbide has become one of the most popular materials used in power electronics in the last two years. That is why we chose it as a ‘engine’ for the introduction of diamond into electronics. Four resident companies were created (Almaznaya Dolina, Almaz-Karabanovo, TsTM-Karabanovo, and Ekstrem-Karabanovo) with experts in growing these materials, their processing, producing ‘epi ready’-type substrates, manufacturing electronic components from them, and assembling modules based on them. These companies joined the Almaznaya Dolina (Diamond Valley) consortium Group of Companies (GC). The State Expertise of the project was completed in November 2024, and the construction of workshops and divisions of the GC consortium is scheduled to start early next year. Currently, our consortium works in a network manner, using the capabilities of the NDT companies (growing the HPHT-diamonds), NPK Almaz (the development of diamond processing technologies and the substrate production), Almaznye Tekhnologii (Diamond Technologies) (CVD mono- and polycrystalline diamonds), as well as the basic enterprises of the electronics industry like Measuring Systems Research Institute (VNIIEF NIIIS) named after Sedakov and the Aleksandrovsky Factory of Semiconductor Devices Krip Techno that joined the consortium. Our partners are also Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University and the Vladimir State University.
What are the prospects for your future product, what output of synthetic diamonds are you going to provide?
We often use the slogan “When you cannot make anything from a rough diamond, make a polished diamond”. But we believe that it is not rational to use a unique material to manufacture these items, so we strive for making high-tech products with electrophysical, thermal-physical, optical, and mechanical properties that ensure the creation of new-generation micro- and nanotechnology products with functional capabilities, modes and operating conditions that were not possible previously. And the output is expected to depend on the needs of society; today, we produce 400 large-size crystals per month for R&D with an average weight of 25 carats each.
There is an opinion that Russia is lagging far behind the West and even the East in technology. What do you think about the possibilities in the development of national technologies and know-how? Is there a possibility for a breakthrough? What does this depend on?
I do not agree with this opinion on Russia’s diamond technological level, because, unlike other challenges, Russia’s materials science base has now provided the opportunity to form a completely domestic innovative technological route for manufacturing the diamond electronics with energy-frequency characteristics, temperature and radiation operating conditions that were not possible previously. This became possible due to the development and implementation of the technology for growing the largest synthetic single crystal diamonds in Russia, as well as the development of processes for obtaining doped epitaxial diamond layers. Today, there is actually a unification of the Russian scientific diamond schools and their know-how into consortiums to create a completely independent national diamond industry based on electronic-quality diamonds that can be considered as Russia’s throwing down a challenge and achieve superiority in a highly intellectual science-intensive sphere.
To support these words, we confirm the stability of our know-how, because today, a month later, our specialists grew another even larger record-breaking nitrogen-free rough diamond weighing 81.35 carats with the dimensions of 22.82x24.89x13.95 mm.
In addition, thanks to the single-sector (111) HPHT substrates with a nitrogen content of over 50 ppm manufactured at our factory, and the NV-centers created on them at V. G. Vins’ laboratory (VELMAN, Novosibirsk), stable pulse lasing on diamond was obtained in September 2024 at the optical laboratories of the Tomsk State University (E. I. Lipatov) and the Saint Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation (V. F. Lebedev), which is a major achievement in diamond optoelectronics. The results of this work were published in Diamond & Related Materials (2024).
Isn’t this an opportunity for a breakthrough?
Galina Semyonova, Editor in Chief of the Russian Bureau, Rough&Polished
