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The Diamond Age
bigner writes "The new diamond age is here and will revolutionize the computer industry. Diamonds show amazing potential as a superior semiconductor."
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Since Debeers owns every diamond mine in the world.
Poor Africans it's thier land but Debeers owns every Diamond producing mine on earth.
Contrary to popular belief diamonds are not rare, Ruby's and Emeralds are more scarce.
diamonds are not really forever
at the bottom there is a link to the next part...
You can't handle the truth.
Read the article.
This company makes the material. It's similar to the guys who make silicon wafers now. They won't design chips, they will just sell carbon to both Intel and Motorola (or whoever is around at the time).
They're not really rare. As the article states, Debeers has a stockpile and controls the supply ruthlessly with tactics that makes Microsoft look like reasonable.
They pretty much ignored an antitrust judgement, have been held responsible for untold exploitation of black African minors, and have been accused of much worse. In the article, one of the interviewees recalls and indirect death threat and treats the journalist with suspicion, fearful that he is an agent of Debeers.
Yes, ladies, we know they look pretty. They may also be more responsible for more terrorism than drugs, certainly more than Bush/Ascroft would like you to beleive.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Karma: Oldschool
Read the article. One of the cartel guys is so scared by this tech that he was white-faced and shaking by the end of his meeting with Clarke. Another diamond guy told Linares that his father's research was an excellent way to get a bullet in the head.
DeBeers is only where they are because they've had a lock on the supply, and imitations up to this point have been less than convincing. Now we have the real thing, man-made. Especially the vapor process. In fact, the vapor process produces even more perfect diamonds than Mother Nature. DeBeers *should* be scared, since the tech is now in North America and they can't do a damn thing to stop it. In fact, the whole conflict diamond problem is undoubtedly going to be a hindrance to DeBeers trying to badmouth these things. Just think of the upcoming PR:
General Clarke: "These are made by the same processes, and are real carbon diamonds. The structure is the same, it is real. It just took us a lot less time to make"
DeBeers: "But *our* diamonds come from our mines in Africa. Surely they're worth more because of that"
General Clarke: "How many children were killed because of those African diamonds?"
DeBeers: "...but, but, we're sure everyone follows the Kimberly accords..."
General Clarke: "Of course. Because bloody military juntas are so concerned with outside trade agreements, right?"
Look into Canadian diamonds.
2. They can be formed into anything from gemstones to about 4 inch wide(so far) diamond wafers.
Nope. 10 millimeters so far.
From page 4 of the article:
At the moment, the company is producing 10-millimeter wafers but predicts it will reach an inch square by year's end and 4 inches in five years.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
You must have missed the part where there are entire buildings built out of diamonds.
on NOVA a few years back..
It dealt with the technology behind these diamond presses.
As I remember, they were still having trouble with microscopic CO2 bubbles being trapped in the formed diamonds, which made the product pretty much worthless.
Pretty cool how much the process has improved.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Go get a periodic table and a description of how Semiconductors work.
Silicon isn't really a proper metal. Like carbon, silicon is on the borderline between metals and non-metals. Silicon forms crystals, just like carbon. It's because they form crystals that they function as semi-conductors - Silicon conducts quite poorly on it's own. Only when doped does it become a conductor. When doped with the appropriate substances semi-conductors have either extra valence electrons in the crystalline structure or "holes" where there should be, which serve to carry the current. Doping diamond should work the same way - Same column of the table, same number of valence electrons, similar crystalline structures.
Why?
I wonder whether some options trading to take advantage of a (hopefully) impending crash in the diamond market is appropriate here. I suppose it'll take a few years, which AFAICT is beyond the horizon of most options trading, isn't it?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Amazing how many brilliant solid state physics people are out there!! Technically silicon is a semi-metal; carbon is a non-metal. Check http://www.webelements.com/ for that info. They are in the same column but they behave very differently. They do not crystalize the same way. Ever hear of carbon rings? They are what organic chemistry is about. Carbon only forms diamonds under great pressure. Silicon forms nice regular crystals fairly easily. Also, since the bonds in carbon are so strong, doping goes a magnitude up in difficulty. Try reading about electronegativity and ionic transference for that. Doping diamond would work the same way, if you can get it to work at all.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
You are off my Christmas card list.
Carbon in diamonds is conductive but only weakly so. Other gemstones are iconic crystals (frequently Al2O3) which by nature would be nonconductive. BTW, carbon in graphite form is single planar conductive. It conducts along one axis but insulates in the perpendicular direction.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Interesting article, but it's missing some of the point. There are two issues here: fabricating substitute "gem" diamonds for jewelry, or fabricating diamond for the semiconductor industry..., or diamond coatings for wear resistance, biocompatible implants, etc. These are an entirely different beast.
CVD diamond, even in with the best of reactors, is limited by growth rates. Working with thin films is, at the moment, the only way to go. You can also only get single crystal diamond by growing on a previously obtained single crystal diamond- as they mention in the article. This is seriously limiting, and they don't mention the growth rates in the article. 5$ a carat is such a BS guess it's not even funny.
CVD diamond grown primarly on Si wafers, and on some specially coated Si wafers, is the way diamond (which is polycrystalline, with different grain sizes giving very different diamond properties) is going to be used in the near to far future. Our group just got a RD 100 award (not that I give that much creedence to those, but it's recognition) for coating 4" wafers with diamond, and we're going up to 8" next year.
The biggest problem is with the electronic properties of the diamond. Sure, it's a great thermal conductor. But... ahem.. it also needs to be a great electical conductor- and have decent mobilities- to be used in actual electronic devices. You can dope diamond with boron to make it p-type, but the conductivity isn't all that high, and the mobility even less, in polycrystalline diamond due to defects and grain boundaries, etc. We've made n-type nanocrystalline diamond with nitrogen, which shouldn't work, but does, and we're still trying to figure out the conduction mechanism.
Thin film diamond is really going to shine for a few particular uses- MEMS (it has extremely low friction/stiction/wear), bio-devices, chemically resistant devices, etc. In all of these cases, even conductive MEMS driven by diamond electronics, borderline and not great electronic properties are fine. (Think Si TFT's for your comptuer display- it's not single crystal Si, obviously, but still has a great potental for other uses.)
There is no way to dope single crystal n-type. People are trying very hard to do this. Some people think they have gotten phosphorous to work slightly, but the growth is very difficult, and the work hard to reproduce. (our doping probably occurs in the grain boundaries, and we think we have actual grain boundary conduction vs. traditional doping processes.) That is a far bigger barrier than just growing BIG DIAMONDS. This article is just some PR spin press release that doesn't really say anything. (As I get more jaded, I see that that is all they really ever are). Just because you can't make Intel processors out of diamond doesn't mean you can't utilize diamond for a large number of exciting applications.
Remember: bigger is not better. Although I personally do like the idea of freaking out DeBeers.
Pull me a diamond boule, and I"ll be impressed.
-j, postdoc at your favorite national lab.
Luster is a function of the cut (or shape) of the gem and its refract index. A diamond has a refract index of around 2.42, while moissanite has a refract index 2.67.
The difference can be shown fairly easily in a ray-tracing program: just build a model in a jewel cut and set it to have varying refract indices, rendering for each one. Be aware that you'll have to set the 'number of bounces' as high as you can get it to see the full effect...
My little research on the topic says which is 'better' depends on lighting (moissanite is slightly colored, which shows in certain lights) and taste.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Using deuterium plasma doping of boron-doped diamond, n-type material with very good activation fraction has been made.
. ta f?sp_k=NMAT&_Action=Search&search_fulltext=n-type+ diamond&search+nature+materials.x=0&search+nature+ materials.y=0
http://www.nature.com/DynaSearch/App/DynaSearch
Things change fast, you gotta keep up with the literature...
A bit of googling turned out this page with pictures of artificial diamond gems, and wafers. Seems like Sumitomo Electric has some wafers larger than the few milimiters mentioned in the article.
I wonder how far along the Japanese are in this research...
Actually, if you read the article you would find out that "cultured" diamonds can come in clear as well, they simply take longer to create then a coloured diamond.
Hrm... While they do have a bit of a yellow or grey tint to them, the refractive index is superior to diamond, and far superior to CZ.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Well, if you read the article you would know that
the doping issues seem resolved, and that diamond
without doping is an insulator. So that takes care
of most concerns. On the other hand, the article
does not say what "k" dielectric pure diamond is.
It might not be very good. And mobility issues
are real. See e.g. Science. 2002 Sep 6;297(5587):1657-8.
for more info, but it looks promising.
Oddly absent -- though perhaps not so considering the source is Wired -- is any consideration of the significance of cheap diamond for optics. Diamond has a substantially higher refractive index than glass and is less subject to thermal and mechanical deformation than glass. What that would mean in practice would require a deeper knowledge of optics than I have, but it sure would be interesting to see what kind of lenses and prisms could be made out of it for cameras, telescopes, and microscopes.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
A quick google turned up this comparison of the difference in properties of diamond, Si, GaAs, SiC, and cBN diamond@rd.kcrl.kobelco.co.jp
Diamonds are IMHO extremely fragile. Would you want to use a glass knife to cut pork? If you are a little bit less than careful it would break and hurt you. If the bottom of a frying pan is fragile you will have a hard time moving stuff around in it. I guess diamond cookware would have the same disadvantages.
Seriously, you're qually full of it whily buying diamonds. Diamond carbon has interesting physical properties, granted (I've even done ab initio research on amorphous carbon), but as a gem?! It's quite common, doesn't look that special and it's supply is entirely controlled by a corporation that makes Microsoft look like Mickey Mouse. And don't even get me started about what they've done in Africa...
Hadn't it been for their and the difficulty in manufacturing them, diamonds would be relatively cheap stones.
The point is that diamonds are not rare.
Reasons why they're costly is
Those are all reasons why their demand is high. I f the demand met the actual supply (i.e. without the De Beer cartel), diamonds would cost something from 10-100 time less. Making them a lot less interesting resulting in even further decline in price as the demand would collapse.
Just thought you should know. I was startled when I first started reading about all this fuzz around diamonds and De Beer.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
It's actually quite a good question.
I can tell you specifically why diamond is not organic with a quick definition that organic chemistry is the study of compounds containing carbon. Diamond is a giant molecule of elemental carbon, so it is firmly inorganic.
Although that definition isn't perfect, some compounds such as carbon dioxide are also considered inorganic.
Some people say that organic chemistry requires a molecule to possess carbon-hydrogen bonds - but that is wrong as well. Tetrachloromethane (CCl4) - dry cleaning fluid - is firmly organic but with no hygrogen atoms to be found in the molecule.
Which leads me to conclude that organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds - except carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and carbides.
Doubtless there are further exceptions.
Best wishes,
Mike.
And let's not forget where the diamonds come from: slave and near slave labor in the darkest regions on the world, supporting some of the richest men. Diamonds are as bad as indigo and spice in the 18th century. But of course, DeBeers dumps so much money into the television chances are you've never heard of it. Programming that exposes the human rights issues surrounding diamond mining and transportation is like derailing a money train.
Check out the national geographic article on the subject from last year. It's very thorough.
Which is why I couldn't conscionably give my wife a diamond engagement ring (she also flat out told me not to). "Here, a symbol of our love: torture, murder and a massive corporate cartel." I got her a sapphire instead, and let me tell you, 2 months salary buys a HUGE fuck-off sapphire.
I would love to see chemical diamonds more perfect than their foreign counterparts take over the world. I would love to see debeers falter and their practices exposed --- soon as that advertising budget goes away, this will be front page shit. I would love to see the end to strip mining and jacked up monopolies.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
These days we make chips on silicon with copper wiring. Copper melts at 1064C, silicon melts at 1414C. Looks like finding an extremely high temperature conductor on par with copper to use for interconnect might be a problem the article completely misses.
Chip manufacturing is such a mature technology that just changing the interconnect from aluminum to copper took decades of work. Don't expect to see diamond substrate on real chips any time soon.
Japan is investing six million dollars in this research?? Come on! Intel is investing six billion in R&D just to figure out how to drive the next generations of silicon technology!
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Hardness != toughness
Hardness is a material's resistance to scratching. Diamonds are the hardest substance on earth in this regard.
Toughness is a material's resistance to breaking when stressed. Diamonds are NOT optimal in this regard. IIRC, diamonds (like most crystalline substances) shear quite easily along their crystal lattices. i.e. they are not in ANY way shatterproof. (This is how diamonds are usually cut - Sheared along their lattice planes.) A diamond will shatter easily if you hit it with a hammer.
It's the same reason one must be careful with silicon carbide tools (drill bits, etc.) - They're damned hard, but they tend to shatter easily.
Now a polycarbonate (nearly impossible to shatter - I can attest to this after having my eye saved by polycarb lenses from a hockey puck at a Cornell vs. Harvard game. Harvard players suck at hockey. The puck is supposed to go into the goal in front of you, not the upper row of the pepband to your left.) lens with a diamond coating might be interesting, although the problem is that the diamond coating might be entirely unsuitable as a coating due to its index of refraction - Many glasses are actually MORE scratch-prone than their primary material due to antireflective coatings. Diamond might have the exact opposite effect - Scratch resistance but WORSE reflection and glare.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Sorry to rain on your parade, but that $10 gem is probably a piece of scrap and the gem industry's prices have not dropped as much as some like to believe. Gem prices are based on cut and quality a lot more than just size. I have been working in and around the industry for quite a number of years and you could often get gems of poor quality for low prices.
And for the guy who wanted to know where to get these garbage gems, go to www.thaigem.com.
Also as to the comment that they are a bad investment, consumption is much greater than the earth can produce and many of the supplies of gems are running dry. Zincite for example recently stopped being produced and the specimen that I bought for $100 USD, one year later was worth well over $1000 USD. Look at gold as another example and how far down they need to dig for it now. The reason why diamond and gold markets are kept artificially high is because the industry wants to string out the limited supplies that we do have.
I won't even make a comment on your pendant though without seeing that.
Demand for gems will always be high but the supplies will only last for so long.
This sig is intentionally left blank
Seriously though, if you are going to have something that hot, you'd need to completely change the entire mainboard design.
I am not so sure this is a given. Heat production may stay in the 100W area. Temperature will go up though due to reducing the volume that heat is produced in, and the surface area the heat can be radiated from. So, the issue isn't so much making the motherboard fire proof or heat proof. The trick is making sure the heat produced by the CPU gets transferred to a larger volume that can radiate it away and maintain a lower temperature before it reaches something that might go up in smoke. This may even mean that you actually want an insulator between the motherboard and the CPU package. You will also want someway to prevent the pins from conducting heat to the motherboard.
Consider an Athlon that was half the surface area to radiate from but still produced 70W. You then put the same heat sink and fan as a current Athlon. What will happen is the chip will increase in temperature until the temperature difference between the heatsink and chip is sufficient to cause 70W to move to the heatsink. If the CPU will operate at that temperature, then there should not be a problem. And, the heatsink temperature should remain identical to a current Athlon. (excluding non-heatsink related heat dissipation)
Dastardly
Heat begets heat...
Because of localized heating, you have to run higher voltages (to overcome resistance) which creates more heat...
Using diamond will actually decrease voltages and heat.
love is just extroverted narcissism
There has never been a case of asbestosis diagnosed from someone who did not work in an asbestos plant
You should ask my uncle Jake about that.
Too bad you can't, because he's dead.
Of asbestosis.
He never set foot in an asbestos plant, or a mine. He was a janitor, and he worked in some old buildings in the city.
I've got to do my Canadian duty here, and plug Canadian diamonds. Canada is pushing to be one of the largest diamond countries in the world, and it is approaching 10% market share - much if not all of it outside of de Beers' control. Sure it hasn't had much of an impact on pricing, AFAIK, but it wouldn't take much more to ruin de Beers' pricing power.