Nanotech Brings Cheap Flat TVs From Diamond Dust

neutron_p writes "Nanotech scientists are going to develop new TV display technology made from diamond dust. It opens up the possibility of cheaper and more power efficient flat panel displays, for use in wide screen digital TVs and many other applications. Toshiba recently announced plans to launch a television based on a new flat-panel display technology called SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display) in 2005. Sony and others have been working for several years on another technology called FED (Field Emission Display) but that too has yet to reach commercialization."

Comments

So informative

[Anonymous Coward]

The article has so little information! it describes nothing of the technology except that it's going to be worked on.

Re:So informative

[gaber1187]

The main publications page for this group is listed here:
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/pt/diamond/publicat.htm

Looks like they are using Diamond Like Carbon quite often... so its a quasi-zinc-blend structure apparently.

With field emission they are generating electrons so somehow the electrons get enough energy to reach the vacuum level. I wonder how efficient this is since diamond's bandgap is something like 5.5 eV.

-Gabe

Re:So informative

[gaber1187]

Ahh, I just figured out the answer. It says that diamonds have a Negative Electron Affinity. Which means that the vacuum level is more stable than the conduction band. Once the electron is excited to the higher state equalling the difference between the bandgap (5.5 eV) and the NEA value (which is 2.4 eV on hydrogen saturated surfaces) , the electron just flies out of the material instead of becoming delocalized into the crystal. So basically what they are doing is replacing the cathode ray tube as the source of the electrons. First flat speakers, now flat tv's!, cool!

Re:Cheap?

[Gadgetfreak]

Diamond dust is a very common by-product from industries that use larger diamonds Synthetic diamonds are also a lot cheaper than most people think. Diamond-embedded grinding and cutting tools have been cheaply mass-produced for quite some time now. Compared to current LCD/plasma display costs, I don't think it'd be crazy expensive.
I guess it depends how perfect you want it.

Re:cheap?

[chochos]

Probably synthetic diamonds, you know, the ones made in high-pressure ovens that cost about $50 and are the bigger than a fist, and are great for this kind of stuff. There was an article on Wired a while back, which I think was also mentioned in /. about this technology. But since nanotech is being mentioned this time, then probably now the diamond dust is being created by nanobots?

Re:Diamonds aren't rare

[amembleton]

According to this article, Russia did flood the market with low quality diamonds. DeBeers reacted by concentrating on high quality diamonds which went up in value rather than down as the low quality ones did.

Re:cheap?

[drinkypoo]

GE invented the process for making diamonds with an array of hydraulic presses, I believe in the sixties. Pressure is required.

Re:cheap?

[Jeffrey Baker]

That isn't how they make them. The giant synthetic diamonds are made by chemical vapor deposition (CVD).

Here's the original press release...

[argent]

Once again, the physorg honeypot grabs slashdot eyeballs. Physorg takes press releases and puts them up, with bad formatting, on ugly web pages... with no links to the original source.

So here's some missing links: the press release at Bristol, the diamond group at bristol and the home page of Advance Nanotech.

As you can see, that's a chemical vapor deposition group, so there's no need to grind up diamond dust from real diamonds. :) It's also, um, not exactly what I'd call "nanotech"... unless you consider any product involving structures at the molecular scale (like, oh, wood, or portland cement) to be "nanotech".

The article.

[satanami69]

Article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.h tml

/. Storyhttp://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03 /08/12/2112237&tid=126&tid=14