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

SED vs. FED?

[chochos]

Is this some kind of reference to Neal Stephenson's Age of Diamonds? The feed was the way nanotech was controlled by the Victorians, and the seed was the way to free it from that control... I know this is offtopic but a post about real nanotech mentioning SED vs FED was just... strange.

Diamonds aren't rare

[Schezar]

Diamonds aren't rare. In fact, there are more jewel-grade diamonds of large size and high quality than there are people.

The diamond industry works entirely off of the perception in most people that diamonds are rare. They strictly limit the supply, and spend more money advertising than they do mining.

If you don't believe me, take a piece of diamond jewelry to several jewelers and have it appraised. They'll all quote a fairly large sum. Now try to sell it to them. They'll offer you maybe 5-10% of what they quoted.

If you shop around, you'll find that you can't actually sell a diamond for anywhere near what it's "worth."

That said, synthetic diamonds scare the living hell out of the diamond industry, since they're cheap to manufacture and indistinguishable physically from a "real" diamond (which itself isn't rare, but I digress).

These displays will drive more research and capital into the diamond manufacturing market, which will drive diamond prices down.

Re:Diamonds aren't rare

[infinite9]

The diamond industry works entirely off of the perception in most people that diamonds are rare.

I heard a story about how Russia had been stockpiling large quantities of high grade (natural) diamonds from their own mines. They went to DeBeers and invited them to buy their stock to prevent Russia from dumping them on the diamond market. DeBeers happily bought their entire stock at a excellent (for russia) price. How's that for limiting supply? :-)

Re:Diamonds aren't rare

[drinkypoo]

There is a book on this subject called "the rise and fall of diamonds" and it tells the story of who is behind the social constrction of the diamond mythology, why they were interested which was not purely monetary, when they got started, what they did, and how they pulled it off. When I found it listed on Amazon, it was listed as "RISE FALL DIAMONDS". I got it for about $12 and so far it's been fascinating.

Re:Diamonds aren't rare

[pz]

I've been saying for about 10 years that the jewlery diamond industry is doomed. Here's the reasoning.

1. Silicon ingots used by chip foundries are the purest substance available to man in production quantities, at 7 nines (99.99999% pure).

2. The semiconductor industry doesn't think twice about investing billions -- BILLIONS -- of dollars in manufacturing and R&D.

3. Diamond is a very interesting base out of which to build semiconductors: it has (from memory) a large band-gap, excellent thermal characteristics, and some blindingly fast transistors have been made in the lab out of it.

Once the semiconductor folks decide that they want to do large-scale diamond manufacturing, there's a huge impetus to generate higher quality diamond than has ever been mined, in quantities that will make the collection of mined dimonds seem a drop in the bucket. The only hope DeBeers has at that point is to market based on the imperfections of natural stones, since perfection, their current stock-in-trade, will no longer be a selling point.

Re:Diamonds aren't rare

[aluminum boy]

Actually, it is the flaws (to a degree) that make a diamond valuable. For instance, colored diamonds (e.g. pink) contain a flaw that give them color. A trained jewler can quickly tell the diffrence between "perfect" industrial diamonds and "flawed" ones. Really, the most valuable natural diamonds are the most perfect imperfect ones.

Re:Diamonds aren't rare

[gtkuhn]

According to the Wired article posted above, Gemesis is located in Florida and producing 3-carat diamonds.

The other company, Apollo something, has found success in manufacture but doesn't seem to be in mass production yet.

Interesting was that De Beers has given away free ultra high-tech detecting machines, invented by them, to labs around the world to detect the trace metal solvents that get stuck in the lattice of the Gemesis stones. Apparently the CVD process used by Apollo looks to be completely undetectable. And if "perfect" needs a few flaws, how hard can that be to introduce?

New Definition of "Nanotech"

[Baldrson]

Since we have now redefined nanotech to include anything that deals in nanometer scale structures, rather than artificially constructed mechanisms with molecules as components, how far back in time can we claim "nanotech" to have been practiced? The first crystal growth? Perhaps to the first time a crystal was cleaved along certain atomic planes?

Perhaps we could do something similar with "space settlement" and just sort of forget that 1973 was the year that western civilization turned away from its destiny in space and began threatning the planet with globalist growth.

That should make everyone feel better too.

Re:New Definition of "Nanotech"

[Goldsmith]

This is something I hear a lot from people outside of science. Who get's to decide what to name a scientific discipline? Scientests?

Nanotechnology in science was never just really small robotics. I do put the start of nanotechnology a long time ago, specifically with the invention of nanoscale titanium dioxide, that stuff which makes paint brighter and sunscreen better. Five or ten years ago, the big push in nanotechnology was finding out what we could already make which would be that small and still interesting. (A great example is carbon nanotubes. They were probably made by Edison, and they were probably seen as early as the 1970's but no paid them any attention until 1991.) Along the way, we've found some things which may be usefull right now, this is why there are so many simple nanotechnology products coming out right now, such as pants and sunscreen.

And before you ask, yes I've read and own Feynman's talk and Drexler's books. Many of the tools they predicted are around today. It turns out they've been done in other ways than they thought they would be. What do you think was important to them, the process or the result? What is important to space settlement, that people get there on a chemical rocket, or that they get there at all?

There are a lot more problems with working with molecules than early theorists thought. For example, I work with nanoscale electronics. I can make a transistor one molecule wide, but it costs about $10,000 by the time you factor everything in, and you only get one. Is that really going to be commercially worthwhile right now? It's worth much more to me to use that as a tool to do something unusual.

There are other, more important things we need to do than try to sell the public our lab tools to justify calling our work nanotechnology. Now that the initial excitement over working with molecules is over, people are looking for things to do which were not possible before. It's silly to argue about the method by which we reach our goals, and what to name those methods, when we all share those same goals.

The health effects of nanotech dust?

[Anonymous Coward]

The original statement about nanotech and dust just got me thinking about something that I hadn't considered before. Namely, has anyone ever studied the dust which results from objects created by nanotech? The reason why I'm wondering about this is due to two recent reports from the past year. The first mentioned that nanotech particles could accumulate within the brain. Sort of like a poisoning effect. The second report was about dust from computer devices made with a flame retardant; the result of which was that the chemical associated with the retardant accumulated in the body as well.

I'm wondering if we'll see a similar report about nanotech dust. Yeesh.

Does anyone know if any research has actually looked at this? Or has this thought been completely missed?