A very SBIR-active firm over several years, Crystallume was purchased by Advanced Refractory Materials, Inc on October 97 and now operates as a division of Robbjack Corporaiton. Crystallume develops a new class of heat conducting diamond ceramic makes possible smaller, faster workstations, computers, and communication systems. Crystallume pioneered the development and application of Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) diamond technology in the early 1980's. Since then, Crystallume's coating experts have become specialists at solving customer problems with diamond technology. Diamond technology isn't new. In the late 1950s, Russian scientists first suggested the idea that diamond could be synthesized by CVD techniques under low pressure. Product designers were interested but, initially, it was viewed as an exotic and expensive solution. Today, with advancements in technology, customers consider CVD diamond to be a viable and important solution for many cutting tool and hard coating applications. In defense, manufacturing, medicine, computing, and many other areas - from components to systems - diamond helps improve product performance. CVD diamond has all the extreme chemical and physical properties of natural diamond and high-pressure, high temperature (HPHT) synthetic diamond. CVD diamond is essentially pure diamond formed as interconnected diamond microcrystallites with no binder - grown directly on the tool substrate. With the intense interest of product designers, diamond may become as common as aluminum is today. Its popularity has grown because diamond properties are found at the extreme poles on material scales and therefore offer many benefits.
