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Scotch tape is great for wrapping presents — and for science, too.
With some Scotch tape and a little creativity, it’s possible to create sheets of diamond up to five centimeters wide and as less than a micrometer thick, a team of researchers reports December 18 in Nature. The sticky stuff helps release these thin films of laboratory-made diamond from their backing, like peeling off a fruit roll-up.
Diamond has many special properties. It dissipates heat extremely well, for example. That makes it appealing for use in electronics, potentially making for smaller, more efficient transistors or other components. And the material can be used to make quantum computers or quantum sensors (SN: 9/19/22). But creating high-quality, freestanding films of diamond has been a challenge.
So when electrical engineer Jixiang Jing of the University of Hong Kong accidentally peeled away a bit of diamond with a misplaced piece of sticky tape, the researchers decided to investigate further. Jing and colleagues deposited diamond on a silicon wafer using a technique called chemical vapor deposition (SN: 4/24/24). Then they cut the wafer to expose its edge, and affixed Scotch tape to the diamond. When they peeled the tape back, the diamond layer came with it. Once the tape was dissolved in a chemical solution, the diamond stood alone.
The diamond membranes could be used in a variety of ways, for example, affixing them to another material to create layered devices, or attaching electrodes to them. As a proof of concept, the researchers made a wearable sensor that could detect the bending of an arm based on the changing resistance of the diamond under strain.
Scientists have used Scotch tape in the past to create thin materials such as graphene, a sheet of graphite made of a single layer of carbon atoms (SN: 3/10/14). Scotch tape is so useful, scientists are sticking by it.
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Physics writer Emily Conover has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. She is a two-time winner of the D.C. Science Writers’ Association Newsbrief award.
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