Diamonds As Room-Temperature Superconductors

Stormalong writes "This article describes research into using diamonds as room-temperature superconductors. If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

Comments

If true, will it be relevant?

[dtolton]

It sounds interesting, although it's hard to put too much weight
into it yet because their results have yet to be independently
verified. He also hasn't even shown it can "expel mangetic
fields to conclusivlely prove that the state is
superconducting."

At least the heading of the article was posted with a question
mark, rather than as an authoritative claim.

If the claim proves to be true, it would be interesting to see
what practical application it can be put to. Will the fact that
it could be a replacement for "hot" cathodes in TV tubes even be
relevant by the time this technology is ready for practical
application. With some of the other new technologies that are
on the horizon such as OLED's, it will be interesting to see
what the life span of the bulky CRT will be.

Re:If true, will it be relevant?

[YetAnotherAnonymousC]

He also hasn't even shown it can "expel mangetic fields to conclusivlely prove that the state is superconducting"

I Am Not A Physicist, but this point makes me especially skeptical. Isn't this test (showing that a magnetic field is perfectly cancelled out within the semiconductor) relatively easy to conduct? Wouldn't the researcher have performed this test before making any claims?

The only thing I can figure is that the hardness and cost of diamond makes it difficult to get a specimen that has the correct topology for the test...

Thermal and Electrical Conductivity

[Michael.Forman]

High electrical conductivity and high thermal conductivity tend to run together. For instance copper has an electrical conductivity of 5.8x10^7 S/m and a thermal conductivity of 200 W/mK.

A notable exception is diamond with a low electrical conductivity on the order of 1 S/m and a high thermal conductivity of 700 W/mK.

Because of diamond's superior thermal conductivity and low electrical conductivity, it functions as an excellent material for use in a heat sink.

What interests me is, that by adding free electrons by doping the diamond with oxygen is he seeing actual superconductivity or just the high conductivity one would expect, if diamond had free electrons.

Michael.

Visit das Schlößl.

Re:Diamond prices

[Van Halen]

Well, as it stands right now, De Beers has a worldwide monopoly on natural diamonds. They have enough stockpiles that they could flood the market at any time and cause diamonds to become cheaper than cubic zirconium. Or so I've read.

In recent years, some scientists have been able to product synthetic diamonds - only distinguishable from "real" diamonds by the fact that the synthetics glow under phosphorescent light (or something like that). I believe the natural diamonds don't do this because of their imperfections. They looked at the possibility of selling synthetics as an alternative in the gemstone market, but De Beers simply threatened to run them out of business with the aforementioned market flooding. The cost of producing synthetics would remain mostly constant, and it wouldn't be worth it if diamond prices took a nosedive.

Now, enter this new possibility (they're still investigating whether it's even true, according to the article). If it becomes economically desirable to produce synthetic diamonds for superconducting purposes, I wonder if that would alter the gemstone diamond market? Perhaps producers could make synthetics primarily for superconducting applications, but slowly insert more into the gemstone market, pulling it out from under De Beers' noses. Eventually they'd be forced to flood the market and the end of an evil, expertly marketed monopoly could come to pass? One can only hope!

The above summary was from memory based on what I've read. I could have gotten some things wrong, so feel free to google for links. I'm too lazy. ;-)

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[pfankus]

Besides, "A Diamond is Forever" is a DeBeers marketing sloagan created in the 1920s, not some ancient piece of wisdom.

...which was featured in /. a little bit ago here. br>
The original article is quite a good read about the diamond industry and how *not pricy* actual diamonds really are. The true price seems to be paid in marketing, inflated costs, monopoly of the industry, and exploitation of indiginous people. Hell, you can make diamonds from the ashes of your dead greatgrandmother!

David Hudson

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are TRULY interested in room temp. superconductors (they already exist as specially formed minerals in the human body) you should check out David Hudson's ORMUS patents.

http://www.ormus.ws/ormus/patents/patents.htm

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[stratjakt]

A cut, polished, precious gem calibre diamond with no significant flaws is quite rare. No doubt the cost to the consumer is marked up quite a bit, but it's a little like saying "theres only a few hundered dollars worth of materials in a Ferrari". It may be true, but there's a whole lot more to a Ferrari than some fiberglass, steel and aluminum.

Anyways, it's worth noting that the DeBeers monopoly got a huge kick in the kiwis a couple years ago when a small (for the industry) startup beat them to the discovery of huge diamond lodes up in the canadian arctic. I can't remember the name of them, but Discovery has been airing a documentary about the discovery.

Manufacturing?

[DuSTman31]

Myself I'd like to know what kind of manufacturing is available to make this possible.

With silicon semiconductors, a massive crystal of the stuff can be grown by suspending a small crystal "seed" an molten silicon and very slowly pulling the seed upwards while rotating..

Carbon, on the other hand, isn't so obliging - It doesn't melt, it sublimes directly from a solid state into a gaseous one, so this way's out..

Using diamond as a basis for microcircuit manufacture can't seriously take off until we can either find a way to create large crystals, or grow large ones from existing small crystals..

Re:quick, call slashdot!

[mark-t]

John Frakes actually answered this frequently brought up point once on a TV special that was taped, in part, on the set of the Enterprise bridge. Indeed, there is a door from the bridge that supposedly leads to a washroom (off to the left of the bridge, if I remember correctly) but it's never shown or mentioned in the show because bathroom oriented material really only makes for tolerable sitcoms, at best.

-5 Offtopic

Re:Diamonds as CPUs

[einhverfr]

That's what really pisses me off. Diamonds are a very very useful natural resource, but instead of being able to take advantage of that, we're forced to pay huge prices only to have them end up as decorations on some floozy. deBeers is evil.


I am really lucky ;-) My fiancee likes diamonds about as much as I do (not that much). Her engagement ring has a lovely blue zircon in it. (People forget that zircons and cubic zirconia are NOT the same thing-- actually yellow zircons used to be among the most treasured gems of the ancient world).

Only on slashdot would people talk about giving engagement cpu's.....