Firm's diamond film strikes gold

Researchers have developed a thin film used in computers which has led to a multi-million dollar deal with an MNC.
By Geraldine Yeo

Researchers from Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) spin-off company, Nanofilm Technologies International, have pioneered a way to make a high-grade diamond thin film. This has many applications, such as coating computer hard disks and their readers. Because it is super smooth, it can reduce wear, prevent corrosion and prolong the products' lives.

Japanese multi-national Shimadzu Corporation signed a multi-million dollar exclusive original equipment manufacturing agreement with Nanofilm yesterday. Nanofilm will supply Shimadzu with the key component to produce the thin diamond coating for disk drive readers, or slider heads. Dr Cham Tao Soon, NTU's president, said it was the first time any of the university's spin-off companies had linked up with a major multi-national company to adopt and market one of it's home-grown technologies.

Led by Associate Professor Shi Xu, 35, Nanofilm's chief executive officer and director, the 15-member research team spent five years and about $2 million to research and develop the new technique which is called Filtered Cathodic Vacuum Arc. Protected by 10 international patents, the technique produces a film which is three to four times harder, and twice as dense as other carbon films, said Prof Shi. It is suitable for use in coating semi-conductors and hard disk drives which have very stringent requirements.

Nanofilm's chairman, Professor Tan Hong Siang, gave an example: the gap between the fast-spinning computer hard disk drive and it's reader is about 20 nanometres, and the protective coating would have to be less than five nanometres. In comparison, a strand of hair is 80,000 nanometres in diameter. He said:"We have to make sure that at fast speeds, the readers can pick up the information on the drives accurately,while at the same time reduce the friction between the two surfaces.

"The diamond film is very hard, smooth and sensitive enough to meet such a requirement".

Shimadzu Corporation's director and general manager(industrial machinery) Mikoi Joh said his company had compared technologies the world over and concluded that Nanofilm's method was the best.

He said: "We plan to incorporate it into our machines and market to the United States. We expect the market size for this one application alone to be worth about US$40 million a year." Prof Tan said the diamond film is being tested for other applications and this included a project with the Singapore General Hospital for hip replacement joints. Nanofilm expects over $20 million a year in two to three years time from the sale of applications.