YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Diamond Transistor

51 points Gravityloss 3 days ago 31 comments

Sath52 3 days ago | parent

Diamonds are incredibly useful,

And logical, now that we can produce them easily enough.

This, is one of many uses of the rocks.

dude250711 1 hour ago | parent

And no, blog writers, it is not heralding "The Diamond Age".

Tepix 1 hour ago | parent

Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

db48x 23 minutes ago | parent

Way better to recommend reading the book instead of the Wikipedia page about the book.

xnx 1 hour ago | parent

Asionometry video on the topic: Why Diamond Transistors Are So Hard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLmd5vL0zmk)

alberth 1 hour ago | parent

Isn't the power consumption needed to create pure/no-blemish lab diamonds so great, that this wouldn't be feasible to scale.

jpitz 1 hour ago | parent

massive crushing pressure is not the only way to create diamond particles.

alberth 1 hour ago | parent

do you mind explaining more

dmitrygr 47 minutes ago | parent

Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD)

londons_explore 1 hour ago | parent

Lab diamonds are used in huge quantities (ie. By the bucketful ) for making cutting tools like saws and drill bits.

I believe the main difficulty is making large and pure diamonds. Making small low purity diamonds is cheap and easy to scale.

phegler 1 hour ago | parent

Okay this is cool research

just one tiny tiny microscopic question...

why would someone use diamond wafer costing 1000x more than a silicon wafer??!

:)

hansvm 1 hour ago | parent

> why?

>> 50x faster switching

It's hard to say which applications will benefit the most, but orders of magnitude improvement tend to enable qualitative shifts downstream.

Not to mention, 1000x is just the cost right now while the tech is new.

TehCorwiz 1 hour ago | parent

If I'm reading this correctly it's two or threefold. Faster switching times, which both increases max speed and reduces power consumption. Avoids flaws due to silicon doping, presently we add ions to silicon to get P or N type junctions and they've found a way to get P type junctions using "2D Hole Gas" which is basically a thin layer of voids inside the bulk diamond crystal after treatment and avoids a category of flaws that affect silicon yields. Third, and this is speculation, but diamond has a way higher thermal conductivity and lower thermal expansion coefficient, so it can likely withstand higher temps and conduct heat away faster.

ktm5j 56 minutes ago | parent

I think the better question is: what real world applications need these qualities enough to justify the cost? They mention cooling application, I don't buy that anyone is that interested in reducing hotspots in their chips even if it makes them last longer.

neerajsi 44 minutes ago | parent

I had a family friend working on diamond semiconductors in the 90s. The application at that time was for sensors located in the hot section of a jet engine.

jbms 1 hour ago | parent

The higher the voltages it can handle, the faster it can switch efficiently, and the better the thermal performance, the wider its potential applications in power electronics.

luz666 30 minutes ago | parent

Hmm, power electronics is often so big, that might need a lot of diamond and could get pricy, who knows.

Very low power chips might be the main application, as there is already a huge market (laptops and phones).

Or maybe there will be a whole set of new rf chips, profiting from the clock speed.

zardo 14 minutes ago | parent

Power electronics isn't just grid scale equipment.

ezrec 1 hour ago | parent

So... how long does the hydrogen gas layer last before it all seeps out?

pfdietz 1 hour ago | parent

I believe these are hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to the carbon atoms on the surface of the diamond.

db48x 1 hour ago | parent

The hydrogen is not a gas.

TGower 1 hour ago | parent

It still amazes me that the rare shiny rocks humanity has appreciated for thousands of years also turn out to have amazing properties even compared to the synthetic materials we are now capable of creating. It's still the hardest material we have measured. It is the best thermal conductor, even though it's an electrical insulator.

MengerSponge 58 minutes ago | parent

It is a very good thermal conductor, but not the best. At low temperatures, copper is better. At very low temperatures, helium is much better.

Superfluid helium's maximum thermal conductivity is roughly 100x diamond's maximum!

hyperhello 46 minutes ago | parent

Neat! At around the temperature of liquid water, it's still about five times as good as copper.

Waterluvian 15 minutes ago | parent

I've thought about this at times. How convenient that things seem to work out that way! Though I wonder if it's more just a bias. All the very impressive things you can make from the abundant materials have already been made. Like, say, all of life?

mitxela 1 hour ago | parent

I still don't know how to even make a silicon transistor.

genxy 39 minutes ago | parent

Make a Point Contact Transistor at home https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmotkjMSKnI

ortusdux 1 hour ago | parent

"DF's production of SCD wafers is as green as any tech manufacturing gets: converting the greenhouse gas methane into diamond crystal using zero-emission energy."

The average cow releases about 250lbs of methane a year. I know press releases get more traction when there is mention of green tech, but it's a bit much to imply that that the production of these wafers will sequester methane in a meaningful way.

ginko 54 minutes ago | parent

Why do people still think they need to mess with scrolling on their websites?