Slashdot Mirror
Japan Developing Diamond-based Semiconductors
s spencer and others wrote in with submissions about Japan funding the development of diamond-based semiconductors to replace silicon chips. The main advantages of diamond include heat resistance and higher electrical resistance.
3rd Post
pentium iii=mitsubishi?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
thanks for playing
I heard in asia that people give mobile phones with diamonds in them as engagement rpesents, so maybe they are taking a stab at the engagement market :)>
we are turning japanese, we are turning japanese yes i really think so!
Computer recycling may have a chance after all ... how many circuits do you have to kill for an engagement ring?
First post!
i'm off to Tiffanys before they run out of these toys!
"Pentiums are a girl's best friend"?
Okay, that's not funny. Taking off Score +1 Bonus.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Diamond based semiconductors? Joy, we're returning to the days of the overly expensive CPU...
Trying to appeal to the female side of the species I see. Diamonds, afterall, are a girl's best friend. :-) How long before they start making chips out of dogs?
hehehehe
She's been pushing for a diamond for a little while now - I wonder if she'll be upset if she gets it in chip form rather than the traditional ring?
This is a breakthrough in wearable computers!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I would say "yes," but why does the ring say "Intel Inside?"
Diamonds are pretty much worthless rocks, they only sell for high prices due to vile cartels such as DeBeers, controlling the market and using tradition and advertising to sell them as rare and expensive gems.
Moore's Law's funeral will have to be postponed for a little while longer yet again.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
The main disadvantages include the fact that diamonds are terribly expensive :)
Isn't that a bad thing? It would increase power requirements, create heat, etc. Even if a diamond chip could stand that, not everything else in the box can - not to mention being a problem for laptop batteries.
They're pretty.
...the jewelry store?
please tell me we're going to start seeing OEM Jewelers popping up now... retail prices are murder!
/dev/random
I thought that we had reached the limitations of linear computing.... such as the height of moore's law..
_-^ D3\/1|_ ^-_ in me
I'm glad they waited until after I bought an engagement ring...
Intel may now become the United States largest diamond importer.
Just as long as the jewelry store doesn't put up a sign saying "Intel Insides Inside"
that's right. just when you thought yOUR billyuns were safe from anybody but fudders (& their payper liesense stock markup fraud, hostage ransom scam "pards") getting them, this happens.
i hope they're not getting their diamonds buy causing babIEs to be dipped in diamond mines.
Just when you think nothing can be more expensive than a Pentium processor (as compared to athlons) they invent a way.
And what the @#^%#? I go to check prices and a Athlon XP 2700 333 costs almost as much as a P4 2.8 ghz.
What you don't want to buy a diamond Pentium 5? Too bad thats all that Dell and Gateway sells and you must buy a diamond cd of WindowsXP SE, all for the remarkable low price of 6,000 dollars.
There are people dying for these, while a tiny group of people has rooms and rooms full of them. If the real supply of diamonds were ever actually released (or hey, there was real competition), the price would plummet.
There's no way enough diamonds in the world to do this....
Women will be pissed....LOL
There are ways to synthetically create diamonds; which are worth nothing in the jewelry market. but then again what geek wouldnt buy a 14k diamond for his love?
As I recall, one of the ways to utterly destroy a diamond is to run an excess amount of current through it. So, if you try to overclock your diamond chip, could you vaporize it? What about current overloads caused by over heating or bad power supply? Could be interesting.
In the wild there are no dumb lions tigers or bears. Only humanity subsidizes the continued existence of the stupid.
And of course the relative abundance of it and extreme low cost.
Practicality anyone?
this will be a better plan if someone can bust the debeers monopoly, and make diamonds a semi-precious stone.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Resistance is ... useful?
I can barely imagine the ThermalTake Volcanoes for these things...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If the CPU is a diamond, I can just jam it in there with all the force I want!
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
WIll women have to buy a man a diamond now... look honey slip on this motherboard, awww it fit's perfect, *on knees* will you marry me?
_-^ D3\/1|_ ^-_ in me
Imagine the overclocking!
Tell me, when we reach temperatures that will make Si melt :)
I thought the main advantage of diamond over Si is a better heat conductance.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Now the diamond conglomerates will face extreme pressure to quit artificially inflating and regulating the cost of diamonds..
Let them burn in hell. (Michael, you too)
Diamonds are a geeks best friend
USAF bombs South Africa in the mistaken belief that they are flying over Iraq.
Another case of life imitating art... or at least catching up with it. To anyone interested in nanotechnology, I suggest reading the Neal Stephenson book "The Diamond Age".
_______
2B1ASK1
I don't know if they will be able to find enough of those diamond flecks (what they cut off while making REAL diamonds). It seems like people these days are buying more and more of that ghetto jewelry with diamond flecks. They might need to use the synthetic diamond material that is use in diamond cutting edges....
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
I'd hate to pay for a beowulf cluster of those!!!
When I was at Auburn, we had Star Wars funding to look into this. We had created a diode that switched at 2000 celcius.
The idea was to have IC circuits right inside the rocket engines.
...if you weren't some suburban 15 year old white kid with too many 2Pac albums. Don't you have school, young man?
One of the most important properties of silicon is the easy to form (both in thickness and control of growth rate) and stable oxide.
Most of an integrated circuit is not active, and just exists for alignment errors and isolation of deplition regions.
I really doubt that Diamond dioxide will be as easy to form as Silicon dioxide.
they are pretty useful for cutting and sanding and also as coating for tools. actually, to cut silicon wafers you need diamond tools (try using a knife to scratch a silicon wafer: you can't - you will break the wafer or damage the knife but putting a scratch on polished silicon is not so easy. I tried it some days ago.).
Pentiums are forever????
Diamonds aren't even the most expensive rock either, Rubies are since there aren't as much. Now the uses of a diamond greatly exceed a Ruby, since its the hardest rock can be used for drilling and the sort. Oh yes, its also Freezes best friend(batman).
Wait a minute...
The main advantages of diamond include heat resistance and higher electrical resistance.
This seems to be going quite in the opposite direction of superconductor research and what most people generally think of as sound design principles - less electrical resistance means a more efficient contraption, right? So what gives? I can't get to the article from here given my Christmas-reduced bandwidth, but is this a Slashdot misprint or is this the truth; and if it's real, then what gives? Why is higher electrical resistance suddenly an advantage?
There is (at least) one key advantage silicon has over diamond (or any semiconductor except Germanium). It has a self-repairing crystal lattice. When dopant atoms (phosphorous, arsenic, etc.) are injected into the bulk silicon wafer using ion implantation (diffusion not used in practice too much anymore) they cause structural damage to the crystal lattice which would hurt circuit performace. However, Silicon has this magical property that if you heat it up to the right temperature (several hundred degrees Celcius) the lattice begins to reorganize itself to incorporate the dopant atoms without damage. Tis process is called Annealing and it is one of the key reasons Silicon became the dominant semiconductor (the other was the availability of a good thermal oxide, SiO2).
Diamond does not have this desirable property, so a lot of research will have to go into maintaining the quality of the crystal lattice.
Here's some background on diamond films:
In July of this year, scientists in the United States reported that isotopically pure diamond films (containing 99.9% carbon-12 and not the 1% carbon-13 that is present in natural diamonds) had been grown. The pure films not only conducted hear 50% better than the best natural diamonds but also withstood damage by laser radiation ten times more effectively than natural diamond.
One could have the concept of combining functions: Glass that serves as a semiconductor, etc. Interesting.
I don't know if manufactured diamonds theaten the jewelry industry, but I doubt it. Although hundreds of almost-slaves labor in mines so deep it's scary, and the industry is full of creepy deals, people buy them, and the industry churns them out just the same.
mug
My fiancé waking up in the morning with her engagement ring missing. Finds me at my work bench mod'ing my PC with her ring, screaming "Scotty we need more power!"
And what about recycling machines that use those chips? Would we see an increase in dumpster diving habits? There'd probably be a lot more people spending time in dump sites combing through the trash to look for things like these.
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
So when can I expect to see you people push for something other than the next penis compinsator?
Com on realy now, your' not only intels little bitch but now your' Dew Burs' as well? Doesn't your anus hurt from take it up the ass already? jeez
I've said this already, but the article was confusing. They meant diamond has a can withstand higher temp. and voltage, not that it was higher resistance in an electrical sense. Their use of resistance had nothing to do with Ohm's Law. I guess the author didn't know about the way the phrase is generally used in electronics.
Also, they are talking about semiconductors, not superconductors. Very different beasts.
The more than something costs, the more practical refining lower quality ore or synthetics becomes. You do it on too large of a scale, however, and you flood the market, and you can't make a profit, so it's a fairly delicate balance.
There may also be advances in detection technology, collection, or other factors that'll result in more expense, but with it, greater abundance.
I mean, think about it... scientists and environmentalists keep talking about how we're going to run out of fossil fuels, but they always seem to keep extending out the critical date... It most likely will run out sooner or later, but the oil companies will keep finding a way to prolong it to make a profit as long as they can.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Yes Diamonds are better than Silicon but:
You still cannot get past some limmiting factors like speed of light and the absolute minnimum structure size.
What the Japanease are looking into will be very large chips. Diamonds are the only good way to get a good yeilds of these. But still when you have a 10x10mm 100 GHz chip it takes several clock cycles to get some information from one side of the chip to the other.
Normal design methodologies will no longer work in the near future just like they are starting to get difficult now. (Moore's Law slowing down)
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Diamond dioxide is actually incredibly easy to form AKA carbon dioxide, I've probably breathed out a few ounces today.
conduction is the opposite of resistance. Hence a semi-conductor could be called a semi-resistor, so to speak.
Indeed diamonds are not semi-conductors but complete insulators and they dont pass current. Its rather bizarre but micro-electronics is not of the hardest classes. Its really a physics class to do with electron migration...
Don't forget thet the pure Si substrate in a chip is an electrical insulator. You want to have the highest possible resistance in the insulator to prevent electron migration in the doped areas of the chip.
The moral of the story is: "Always remember to mount a scratch monkey."
When I die maybe I can become a CPU! Thanks to intel and lifegems http://www.lifegems.com Maybe Intel will want to buy grandpa when he croaks. In the future you'll be able to get a faster processor everytime a loved one dies!
I suppose now we will see P.Diddy singing "It's all about the pentiums"...
I got my girl a diamond earing so she had some processing power above the neck.
Now SHE wants a beowulf cluster of these.
...nor would they be expensive, were it not for diamond cartels in africa with a stranglehold on the mines.
...
DeBeers Consolidated Mining Co. was started in the 1880s to accomplish exactly this. Control diamond supply in order to raise prices.
To control demand, they invented the diamond engagement ring. They'll tell you it was invented in 1477, but this is just the first instance of an engagement ring being given with a diamond in it.
The "Diamond Engagement Ring" standard wasn't established until their "A Diamond is Forever" advertising campaign started in the late 1930s. It's still going, with those cool shadow commercials.
However, recently other mine companies have been gaining ground, and soon there will be more competition, but it's still gonna be a fight.
The diamonds in these chips will be artificial, so i'm just randomly kickin knowledge here. Have fun with it, and if you're lucky, maybe your fiancé will understand and save you a few grand...
vk.
All useful semiconductors are actually semi-insulators: you need doping and bias to promote electrons to the conduction band. In fact, semiconductors are sometimes characterized by their "bandgap voltage" which means how much voltage is required to promote an electron from the valence band, where it is tightly held to the lattice, and the conduction band, where it can move freely as part of an electrical current. The thing that makes diamond withstand high temperatures and voltages, its high bandgap, is also on of the things that makes it hard to work with.
Here come the carbon-based artificial life forms.
The main advantages of diamond include heat resistance and higher electrical resistance.
And a certain BLING, BABY!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
No way in hell is anyone yelling "Scotty we need more power!" even getting a date let alone a woman willing to marry him.
these guise do they ever quit?
big excitment about some heavy duty star gazing & hand waving, resulting in the speculation buy the VAST majority of fine&shill analcysts overt at bearonstearno.con, saying that sum of our billyuns would be returning some time next year, as if buy magic, if we would be willing to make some more heavy bets on phony payper stock markup scams. those guise. sheesh!@#$% do they think that we're sheep?, or stupid/greedy/afraid? we'll show them. right robbIE?
The idea of using diamond as a semiconductor has been kicking around for years with quite a bit of research being done world wide.
Technology Research News has an article published in September that discusses this.
Among other things they mention that diamond's charge carrier mobility is three times better.
Diamond transistors could in theory deliver one watt of power at 100 gigahertz, or billion cycles per second, said Isberg. This is five times faster has been achieved using the semiconductor Gallium Arsenide.
Diamond-based electronics would also be better than existing semiconductor materials for high-temperature applications, said Isberg. Diamond conducts heat 15 times more efficiently than silicon, and therefore cools faster.
etc. etc.
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
We cue the pseudo-gangsta asian kid saying "Even mah pc is iced out FOOOL!"
The main advantages of diamond include heat resistance and higher electrical resistance.
I'm not an engineer, but I always thought that electrical resistance was bad for a CPU. (caused heat build-up)
Japan is always at the cutting edge of technology *COUGH*
Okay, I'm not a double-E, but aren't "higher speed" and "higher voltage" at opposite ends of the trade-off spectrum? It takes a finite time for the voltage to rise from "0" level to "1" level. A higher voltage threshold for the "1" ("ON") state should translate to a longer rise-time, si?
Isn't that why faster CPUs have lower core voltages? Sure, you also get lower heat dissipation and power consumption, but isn't the primary reason speed?
Rick.C - "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" -- um.. you must be using a -seriously- abridged dictionary!
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
What tradition? DeBeers started all that diamond shit in a stroke of marketing genius. What to do with all these worthless rocks? I know! Create a need!
yeah, isn't it ?funny? how the # of anacysts who bulleave the stuck markup will go DOWn further, is 0?
that's the "new" FraUDuleNT math/eye gas. whereas, everybody bulleaves just won thing.
we're hoping God is too busy to have to watch this/US dooing such things (greed/fear based deception) to won another.
How will we tell the people from the machines if we can't refer to them as carbon-based and silicon-based life anymore?
Read the full text my book Perl for the Web
- Diamonds, as used in jewelry, are artificially rare. That's right.. the rock on your engagement ring is only rare because DeBeers & friends keep millions and millions of diamonds locked up in vaults. This is not conspiracy theory... it's a verifiable fact.
- The average cost of diamond, if all diamonds available were in circulation, instead of in vaults, would be about $1.50 per ct.
- Small diamonds, the kind used in diamond saws, industry, etcetera, are NOT expensive, like your engagement ring. Small diamonds are common and cheap, because they have no real jewelry market. Diamond impregnated stones and blades cost more because it costs more to manufacture them.. not because of the diamond.
- Good luck convincing your girl of ANY of this. You still have to buy that rock. Get over it..
Chip manufacturers would implement some sort of frequency cap, just as AMD did with the newer Athlon XP chips. Although the chips could stand the heat, would PCB boards do? Or the PC casing and wiring? Makes me think...
How else can two months' salary last forever?
big disconnect with the facts here. tell 'em robbIE.
And you guys thought they couldn't find a way to make computers really expensive again!
Here's the NIST funded research and development
http://www.atp.nist.gov/eao/sp950-1/diamond.htm
http://www.diamondsemiconductor.com/homepage.ht
There are other ways to produce diamonds (than DeBeers version) for this and other uses. Look at
http://www.auburn.edu/~blumeri/diamond/diamond.
http://www.anl.gov/OPA/logos18-1/diamondfilm1.h
...include... higher electrical resistance.
Is that all it takes? I have lots of stuff here that might be groundbreaking...
World awed by carpet-based semiconductor
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
If it comes with a Platinum vents, 20 inch subs, blue lighted keyboard, and some nice curb feelers.
And we'll finally get that server on the Sun's
surface.
very high resistance is good for the substrate, upon which you place your doped (conductive) materials for active components, and metals for "wires"....this keeps current leakage down.
It's been 12 years since my semiconductors course, so forgive me, but wasn't there a specific reason why Si was used? It seems like it there were specific properties of silicon that made it more inherently valuable than carbon. I think the main thing was that since carbon and silicon are in the same columns on the periodic table, they shared similar chemical properties, but I seem to remember vaguely that silicon maybe interacted differently with the doped molecules that were added to make semiconductors?
Bah. I'm going to have to open up my damn semiconductor books again when I get home. Goddamnit, I thought I was through with all that studying!!!
I wonder how they're going to replace SiO2 as an insulator. With silicon, if you want an insulator, you just add oxygen and heat a bit and you get an SiO2 (glass) layer, which is a good insulator. With Carbon (diamond), all you'd get is CO2, which is pretty useless (not to mention anti-Kyoto). They'll need a good (and cheap) insulator for carbon, don't remember what they did for GaAs, though...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Whoops, looks like the original Star Trek movie will have become obsolete now, since computers will also be carbon-based units as well!
I thought everyone knew that the favorite gem of the Japanese was the Ruby!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
You may recall the story on Slashdot from a few months ago Cremation? Burial? How about Diamonds? where the deceased can be cremated and turned into diamonds.
Extending that idea just a little...
It give a whole new meaning to naming a machine.
O=='=++
With all this slashtalk about responsibly disposing of/recycling your hardware components something like this develops.
Diamonds aren't biodegradable--in fact, they're reverse-biodegradable: under the earth, they become more diamondy through time.
The Japanese will soon discover they will have diamond runoff from their landfills. This will get into their drinking water and they will ingest it and start developing diamond deposits in their joints.
On the other hand, so to speak, if I ever get married I'll be wearing a pda on my ring finger
The Next Generation of Processors: Pentium Diamond finally a name that doesn't include a number
Never mind
True quartz has piezoelectric factors... but Diamonds can burn! Just like coal... except they explode due to the pressures inherit in their creation...
Overclocker1: Shit, wonder how many more degrees I can clock this baby...
Overclocker2: Did you remove the oxygen?
Overclocker1: What? Why?
*BOOM*
Okay, maybe not that drastic... but it's pretty nasty.
Winged Power Photography
Why don't they teach this in school? things that are hard aren't necessarily strong, and are often quite fragile! You can SHATTER diamonds faily easily, you know like, say, glass, although it takes a bit more force. Another example is iron. Iron is stronger i.e. less likely to break, than steel, but it is soft and deforms. Steel is less likely to deform, but is much easier break into pieces.
"This property means that diamond chips can work at a much higher frequency or faster speed and be placed in a high-temperature environment, such as a vehicle's engine..." ... or an Athlon machine.
A Dawn for Carbon Electronics?
,1670 (2002). ,J.Vac.Sci. A6 ,1953 (1988). ,1811 (1989). ,51 (1955). .39, 2915 (1968) ,380 (1968). .17 ,3106 (1982). .72 ,1878 (1998). .10 ,281 (2001). .4 ,622 (1995). ,222 (1997). ,390 (2001). ,321 (2002). ,457 (2001).
Gehan A.J.Amaratunga
Science 297 (2002) p.1658
Pure carbon naturally forms two different crystalline materials: diamond, in which all bonds between carbon atoms are the same, and graphite, with two different types of bonds between the atoms. Because diamond is the higher energy form of the two, its natural occurrence is rare compared with that of graphite. In contrast,
the lowest energy form of related elements such as silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge) has the same
crystal structure as diamond, but no naturally occurring form like graphite.
The quirk of nature that makes graphite the lowest energy form of carbon is the main reason it has not been used in electronic devices, in stark contrast to its neighbor in the periodic table, Si. A report by Isberg et al. on page 1670 of this issue provides hope that the time has come for diamond electronics (1).
A material suitable for an electronic device must not conduct electrical current in its pure state at room temperature. However, it should be possible to tune its conductivity in a controllable manner by introducing trace amounts of impurity atoms (dopants). Such materials are termed "semiconductors".
Graphitic carbon conducts electricity at room temperature. In contrast, diamond is a semiconductor with physical properties (such as maximum electric field, saturation velocity, thermal conductivity and band-gap) that make it the ideal material for electronic devices (2, 3). The major barrier to realizing this potential of diamond to date has been the difficulty in synthesizing it in a form that is pure and perfect enough for electronics.Natural diamonds (see the figure) have too many defects and impurities for use as semiconductors, regardless of the cost associated with their rarity. Only manufactured semiconductor materials are of the appropriate quality for electronics. Crystalline Si wafers used for electronics have impurity and crystalline defect densities that are lower than the atomic density by a factor of 10^-11 to 10^-12. Electronic grade Si is the purest bulk material known.
The first artificial synthesis of diamond was reported in 1955 (4). It was achieved by subjecting graphite to high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) in the presence of a transition-metal catalyst. This method is now a standard industrial process. It yields diamonds with submicrometer to submillimeter dimensions that are used as grit in mechanical applications such as polishing. These applications exploit the extremely high hardness and chemical inertness of diamond. But until recently, the impurities and defects in HPHT-synthesized diamonds and their small size precluded their use in electronics.
Alternative methods aimed to synthesize diamond from the vapor phase (5, 6). The first practical method for deposition of diamond from the vapor phase used a hydrocarbon plasma (7). This study heralded a burst of research activity aimed at exploiting the properties of diamond in electronic devices (8).
However, plasma-deposited diamond is not a single crystal. It is made up of many individual crystal grains of 1 to 10 um in diameter that are oriented differently. Plasma-deposited diamond is polycrystalline when grown on a high-purity noncarbon substrate material, usually a Si wafer. Some success was achieved in growing diamond grains with the same crystal orientation on a different substrate (beta-SiC), and the resulting films showed promising electronic properties (9). But beta-SiC is also difficult to synthesize, and general progress was impaired by not having available diamond of the required quality.
Over the past 2 years there have been renewed grounds for cautious optimism. High-quality HPHT diamonds in polished form with dimensions of many millimeters have become available, forming suitable substrates on which ultrapure diamond can be grown with a hydrocarbon plasma source(10). The fusion of the two methods for ynthesizing diamond artificially has led to the
demonstration of single-crystal diamond layers that approach the quality required for electronic devices (11-13). Importantly, it has also been possible to control the conductivity of diamond layers by incorporating boron during plasma growth. Therefore, two of the key elements required from a semiconductor material suitable for electronic devices - a high-quality crystal that can be doped - are now achievable in diamond. The results reported by Isberg et al. (1) could be a watershed for carbon electronics.
The authors have artificially synthesized diamond with electronic properties that surpass those expected from theory or measurements hitherto. In particular, they have measured the mobility of holes and electrons in their very high quality diamond. The mobility mu is a constant of proportionality that links the velocity v that a mobile charge carrier - an electron (-) or a hole (+) - achieves in a solid subjected to an electric force field E (v = mu * E).
Isberg et al. have measured mobility values for low electric fields of 4500 cm^2/Vs for electrons and 3800 cm^2/Vs for holes in plasma-grown diamond. These are the highest values of mobility
ever measured in diamond. The hole mobility measured in diamond is significantly greater than the electron mobility measured in SiC and GaN (see the table), two other wide-band-gap semiconductors currently explored for high-frequency (>10 GHz) and high-power density applications (14, 15).
At present, the controlled change in the conductivity of diamond can only be achieved through increase of the hole concentration through boron doping. The results suggest that hole-conducting (p-type) diamond devices may be a practical and better option than electron-conducting (n-type) SiC or GaN for high-frequency and high-power electronic devices.
THE LATEST MOBILITIES OF DIAMOND
IN COMPARISON TO OTHER SEMICONDUCTORS
Mobility [cm^2/Vs]:
C: 4500(electrons), 3800(holes)
SiC: 700(e)
GaN: 2000(e)
GaAs: 8500(e)
Si: 1500(e), 450(h)
Ge: 3900(e), 1900(h)
Maximum electric field [V/cm]:
C: 1e7
SiC: 3e6
GaN: 3e6
GaAs: 4e5
Si: 3.7e5
Ge: 2e5
Band-gap [eV]:
C: 5.5
SiC: 3.26
GaN: 3.0
GaAs: 1.42
Si: 1.12
Ge: 0.66
References:
1. J.Isberg et al.,Science 297
2. M.W.Geis,N.N.Efremow,D.D.Rathman
3. K.Shenai,R.S.Scott,B.J.Baliga,IEEE Trans.Electron.Devices 36
4. F.P.Bundy et al.,Nature 176
5. J.C.Angus,H.A.Will,W.S.Stanko,J.Appl.Phys
6. B.V.Derayaguin et al.,J.Cryst.Growth 2
7. S.Matsumoto,Y.Sato,M.Kamo,N.Setaka,J.Mater.Sci
8. G.Sh.Gildenblat,S.A.Grot,A.Badzian,Proc.IEEE 79, 647 (1991).
9. H.Kawarada et al.,Appl.Phys.Lett
10. H.Okushi,Diamond Relat.Mater
11. B.A.Fox et al.,Diamond Relat.Mater
12. A.V.Vescan,P.Gluche,W.Ebert,E.Kohn,IEEE Electron Device Lett.18
13. H.Taniuchi et al.,IEEE Electron Device Lett.22
14. S.-H.Ryu et al.,IEEE Electron Device Lett.23
15. L.Shen et al.,IEEE Electron Device Lett.22
I already have a Diamond video card!
Cyrix is going to make a comeback with their new Cubic Zerconia processors??
It's gotta be fate..
(btw, i tried to register.. never got my login info)
JohnyElvis
but diamonds are a geek's best friend.
OK, I'll stop now.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Over the last 10 to 15 years or so, there has been interest in using carbon based fabrication instead of silicon. I'm not a physicist and my memory could be fuzzy on this, but I think the idea is that Carbon can be induced to assume fairly large molecular configurations other than diamond, graphite and "coal", including "Buckyballs" by Smalley, Curl and Kroto and "Nanotubes". These forms have different electrical conducting properties than the other forms of carbon (in fact they act as semiconductors), permitting very small device size (at the molecular level). Doping is not needed, since the conducting paths are made of the same material (albeit in a different molecular configuration) as the rest of the wafer. For an introductory treatment, try this technology review article.
Scuffing feet new trend in tablet-pc users
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
...but this one becomes obsolete every three to six months!
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
Yep. I can just see it now. Camouflaging my 4 processer server as a hot-plate. Problem is, when I set my computer to 'simmer' quake goes down to 158 frames/second.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
(For those who don't get it, think about the diamond commercials that saturated the airwaves during the Xmas season the last few years, and were finally killed off in 2002.)
Not one reference to Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age!!!
I know it's tangentially related at best, but c'mon people: This is Slashdot fer cryin' out loud!
I think so.
VMS Beer: Requires minimal user interaction, except for popping the top
and sipping. However cans have been known on occasion to explode, or
contain extremely un-beer-like contents.
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