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Making Microelectronics Out of Nanodiamond
Science_afficionado writes "Electrical engineers at Vanderbilt have created the basic components for computer chips out of thin films of nanodiamond. These combine the properties of vacuum tubes and solid state microelectronics and can operate in extreme environments where normal devices fail."
So are we approaching diamond age now?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Don't turn the ring down. All the best electronics are made out of diamonds this size.
Each individual feature is just too big. You're looking at individual transistors 20x or more larger than what we have today on silicon. Faster and lower power, maybe, until you try and build a working CPU from them and discover you need a die 3cm x 3cm. Niche products only.
Making picoelectronics out of femtodiamonds.
"Potential applications include military electronics, circuitry that operates in space, ultra-high speed switches, ultra-low power applications and sensors that operate in high radiation environments, at extremely high temperatures up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit and extremely low temperatures down to minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit."
Why not use this design for consumer products? All the way around it's a better design. I'd cough up a few bucks more for this chip.
Did they watch Eureka a couple of seasons ago...They had a thing called a "Logic Diamond"
Oh yes.
Oh yeah.
That sounds good! A giant cum fiesta is taking place right inside your ass!
hahahahahahaha cum fiesta!
dose this mean i have to buy a new tough book?
that's easy stuff, they should try the other way around: nanoelectronics out of microdiamonds.
You can't handle the truth.
You can't make vacuum devices with holes, so there are not the complementary devices needed for CMOS like operation. We would be working with a technology similar to N-channel FETs, with all the problems of low-output state power dissipation. It won't scale to high integration levels. That said, the technology probably has niche applications in high temperature and rad-hard environments.
I did research on this stuff back in the 1990s. Made the films, did the vacuum chambers, had the world record for emission efficiency for a while. While it may have some niche applications, the basic problem is that it is *not* a low-voltage technology. Modern chips operate on 1.5 V or so; Diamond devices will be more like 5V. So ultra-low power? Nope. They say that the devices are more efficient because the electrons don't bump their way through the silicon crystal lattice. While that's true enough, it doesn't actually make a big difference. Why? Because the electrons very much will dump all their energy when they leave the vacuum and hit the anode.
Ultra-high speed? Again, while vacuum is nice in that it doesn't slow down the electrons, that turns out not to be a big effect. The most important factor in speed is the size of the device, and there is certainly no reason to believe that these vacuum tubes will be smaller than transistors, if built with the same lithography tools. I may be wrong, but I have good reasons to believe that they will be harder to make small.
High temperature? Radiation resistance? Maybe, but that turns out to be a complex question. These devices aren't just diamond and vacuum. They involve insulating layers, too, and those insulators may be affected my high temperatures or radiation. Essentially, a device is as robust as its weakest link, so until you can make the entire device out of truly robust materials, you won't gain too much.
So, it's nice work. I know how hard it is to do this stuff. And, it might be useful eventually. But it won't revolutionize technology any time soon. And, those guys ought to realize that, if they would let themselves. Research lives off publicity these days, because it is being forced to become more and more of a competition between groups. The trouble is, when competition enters and your salary depends on the claims you can make, truth tends to be (shall we say) over-inflated.
That darn free market ideology messes up science. I like it as much as anything for people who make spoons or telephones. But science isn't making spoons. If you get a bad spoon, you'll know it, but if you read an exaggerated research paper, how can you tell, other than by doing the research again? And, that's just not efficient: doing it wrong and then doing it again isn't nearly as good as doing it right the first time.
Oh well. Enough ranting.
They claim those are 10 times more efficient than silicon ones and heat resistant up to 500 degrees Celsius. So they could handle insane frequencies, before even needed to be cooled.
I have a feeling the vacuum requirement is going to be a bigger problem than the article implies. It is not just a matter of manufacturing the device in a vacuum, it is keeping the materials from sublimating due to a dissociation constant of the hydrogen embedded in the substrate. The amount would be microscopic, but that is a lot when you are taking nanoscale. And gas would not need to flood the device, just a small amount could render it unreliable, depending upon the application. I'm sure some would suggest fault tolerant design, as is typical in current chip processes. That might do it, but I doubt if the legacy methods would easily port to the new paradigm. This is not to say it will not happen, just that the smallest of things tend to delay commercialization the most.
I'm wondering how resistant to EMP electronics made out of this would be.
So how is "nanodiamond" material different from graphine?
G.
Did they make the diamond out of picocarbon?
As Nitrozac wrote: Tubes Rock!
(I wore out my t-shirt.)
Satisfying to see that speculation of diamond as basis for Netty's progeny, per Unusual Perspectives is,so far, right on track.
Samefaggotry
Zed: A receiver must be like a transmitter. I think you're a crystal - in fact this one! This diamond! In here, there is infinite storage space for refracted light patterns. Yes or no? The Tabernacle: You have me in the palm of your hand! From Zardoz.
CMOS (and TTL) consumes so little energy, because it consumes (mostly) energy only when gates turn on or off.
To do this one needs N-type gate and P-type gate.
Classic vacum tubes are and N-type (not called as such, but that is what they are.)
Altenatives such as GaAs and N-mos consume too much power for high number of gates. They are not used for microprosessors anymore.
Cray went bankrupt for reason...
Solving the speed and the size problem is not enough. Without the P-type gate the speed and integration size are not enough to make microprosessors, they migh be ok for special uses though. ...or one would need get them running in high teraherz range or so that processor with just few thousand of gates that is running at 300 celsius would make more calculations that a silicon one.
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Someone had to say it.
I remember reading about this kind of thing in the mid 1990's. Scientific American reported on it. At the time, they were making diamond films on ceramic substrates. the diamond was grown by creating a carbon atom plasma and shooting it at the substrate. Shock plasma deposition of the carbon. It wasn't very efficient. They hadn't worked out too well how to mask and etch the films, so they were using electron beams tp cut into the diamond, then adding the dopant. That limited the size of the device produced. The device was around the diameter of a pencil eraser. The researchers (in Japan, if I remember correctly) were predicting commercial development in as little as five years. Well, I never saw anything come of it.
I was looking forward to that coming out too. I am an electrical engineer, and have worked for a long time with plans for building facilities and power lines and so forth. The device made in Japan was a single SCR (silicon controlled rectifier) that would work just fine at 600 Volts, and a little over 200 Amps. It operated at a temperature of a little over 600 degrees C, but still, an SCR can be used for many power applications. That single SCR was controlling a around 120KW. For big AC to DC power lines, we use SCR banks where each of the SCRs operate at about 24 Volts relative to the next SCR in the stack. This for stacks that go up to 750 KV. The stacks are paralleled to get the current that actually goes out over the line. One such line goes from Washing State to LA, and carries close to 10% of the total power used by LA. for what I was doing at the time. These diamond SCRs would have made a great speed control motor starter. At 480 VAC, we could have made the controller with six SCR's, three fuses, and a disconnect switch, plus a small PLC board. The control station would be bigger than the controller. Typical controllers for this type of application on say a 100 HP motor are around 7 feet tall, 4 to 10 feet wide and 3 to 6 feet deep. reducing this to 2 Feet wide, 3 feet high and 1 foot deep would free up a lot of space. This, if purchasable, would have given me a lot more freedom in placement. If I could reduce the size of the controller, the process people would have loved to use the extra space. I could have used that to justify spending up to $100,000.00 more for the device, in some cases.
We could really use such a device in industry. There are a ton of uses that I could think of off the top of my head. Used as an ultracapacitor controller, it would enable a single capacitor, the size of a couple of C cell batteries to store more power than a car battery. A large electronically controlled circuit breaker, with custom controls, and a quick action would also help to save a lot of equipment and lives.
There were a couple of real problems with it, though. First, it's flammable. The actual electronics would need to be isolated from any contact with oxygen. Encapsulation would do that. Real Graphene computer chips, which I would expect to see before this matures, would also be flammable. But, there are more options for protecting those, because of the relatively lower temperatures.
Also, the Diamond SCR's operated at temperatures higher than some common conductors can withstand, and well above the temperature at which Diamond burns. There would have to be special connectors, and cooling systems. That heat, even if from a small eraser sized element needs to go somewhere. Ultimately out into the environment.
Second, it's apparently not an easily commercialized process or material. I am seeing more reports of Diamond film growth, and also of graphene film growth and production. That is a good thing. Graphene seems to be moving towards fabrication faster than diamond. I would like to see both happening. I have also seen recently, that very low impedance conductors have recently been made from carbon nanotubes. While not room temperature superconductors, if they have lower conductivity than copper, I would really like to be able to specify them. Cost would be a factor there. Bu
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