Printing halftone photographic images on diamond by focused silicon ion implantation

Abstract

A process for creating archival records on a very long-lived durable material is demonstrated. Optical and scanning electron microscope viewable photographs were printed into the surface of a chemical vapor deposition diamond wafer by silicon ion implantation. The damage caused by the implant converts the transparent diamond to visible (black) forms of carbon. The photographs were printed using both halftone and gray-scale encoding. The halftone encoding was accomplished by implanting an area proportional to the desired optical density within the 1 μm square pixel at a fixed area dose. This photograph may optionally be “fixed” by annealing the sample at 1000 °C. This transforms the amorphous carbon to graphite. For the gray-scale encoded image, an 800 nm square is implanted with an ion dose proportional to the optical density of each pixel.