The Diamond Age 653
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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The Diamond Age
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What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey
Copying Apple again (Score:4, Funny)
Back in the day. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Back in the day. (Score:3, Funny)
Price Point (Score:5, Interesting)
They are listing numbers like $5/carat (1ct should be enough to make a processor chip... certainly 2 or 3 cts is).
If anything, this might actually be cheaper than silicon by the MHz, thanks to its superior semiconductor and insulating properties and higher thermal conductivity.
But is the reverse true? (Score:5, Funny)
Bah, I'm more concered about the reverse being true. You know, like when semiconductors will show amazing potential as a superior diamond. Because it's a hell of a lot cheaper to give my girlfriend a chip than a diamond ring. And just because you're not using diamonds doesn't mean you can't differentiate on the value. The slick executive types will propose with dual Athlons, while the poor struggling college student will have to resort to a 6502 or something.
Re:But is the reverse true? (Score:4, Funny)
Because nothing says 18 months like a CPU...... And noting says forever like a ruby or a sapphire....
(Take that, deBeers!!!)
Actually I like most gemstones more than diamonds, but they do have some interesting structural properties.
Re:But is the reverse true? (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm more concered about the reverse being true."
You must be from Soviet Russia.The reverse IS true! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you ever see a top white diamond next to a Moissanite, you'd swear the diamond was glass. The Moissanite is almost blinding.
Re:The reverse IS true! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:The reverse IS true! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But is the reverse true? (Score:5, Funny)
Wanker. If you were a Real Programmer, you could impress your fiance by doing something useful in 6502 assembly language in a 64k address space that the slick executive did in 128 megs of RAM with a development team of fifteen on an Athlon. Quit your bitching and get a MOV on.
Re:But is the reverse true? (Score:5, Funny)
Jon
Real vs. Fake (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't want to have that sort of guilt hanging over my head, so I didn't go with the cheaper diamond.
I decided to buy her a cheapy cubic zirconium instead.
Re:Real vs. Fake (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real vs. Fake (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, you're qually full of it whily buying diamonds. Diamond carbon has interesting physica
...will it now? (Score:4, Insightful)
I still see an AMD chip in my computer, and nice, large visible chips in the stores.
So now it's diamonds? I'm not trying to troll, but when will mainstream applications (see: desktop computers, or at least universities) come around? Until we see anything, it's all theoretical, and all subject to just being vaporware.
Re:...will it now? (Score:5, Funny)
Apollo produces its diamonds by CVD -- chemical vapor deposition. So, in a way, these new diamonds are literally vaporware.
Does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)
My ex got a diamond video card (from her previous ex) on their anniversary. She warned me sternly that it would not work on her again.
Give Peace a Chance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give Peace a Chance (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Give Peace a Chance (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Give Peace a Chance (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm so pleased. Really really pleased. Aside from furthuring the hopes and dreams of everyone's favorite science fiction writer, this has a real potential for curbing South African violence. Call me liberatarian, but much like the pending legalization of all controlled substances (I can dream can't I?), a potential for cheap diamonds could destroy any black market demand for our little carbon friends.
Sure it would be nice if synthetic diamonds lead to world peace, but all I really care about is that this
Diamonds without guilt (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Diamonds without guilt (Score:5, Informative)
Kathleen Fent Read This Article (Score:5, Funny)
Kathleen, I bet you are kicking yourself for giving in so soon now!
(with apologizes to CmdrTaco)
Good news (Score:5, Interesting)
and by the way (Score:4, Informative)
at the bottom there is a link to the next part...
Don't Buy Diamonds (Score:5, Informative)
They pretty much ignored an antitrust judgement [usdoj.gov], have been held responsible for untold exploitation of black African minors [stanford.edu], 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 [globalpolicy.org], certainly more than Bush/Ascroft would like you to beleive.
Re:Don't Buy Diamonds (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't Buy Diamonds (Score:3, Funny)
Uh...I thought that was R. Kelly [chicagotribune.com].
GF.
Re:Don't Buy Diamonds (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't Buy Diamonds (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tell that to your fiancee... :0) (Score:5, Insightful)
With the advent of manufactured (umm, "cultured") diamonds and their potential uses in computers, I suppose I might be interested in a little "bling bling" now. That is, if the "bling bling" is safely inside the newest, kewlest mega-badass computer. 8-)
Re:Tell that to your fiancee... :0) (Score:4, Interesting)
I know you're joking, but I think that a lot of guys would really be surprised as to how reasonable a lot of women are these days about this issue.
Fortunately, there are options to buying a DeBeers diamond [canadadiamonds.com].
Read! (Score:5, Interesting)
If they did they would know that these are manufactured diamonds using relativly new processes that allow for some large diamonds.
Being manufactured they are rather cheap. The jewel grade stones will be sold at about half fo what debeers is selling thier diamonds for.
The big falacy about diamonds is that they are scare. They are, in fact, in great abundance but most of the world's supply is controlled by Debeers. They trickle diamonds onto the market keeping the price artificially high.
To summarize.
1. We can now make great looking diamonds for cheap. (2 different methods of doing so)
2. They can be formed into anything from gemstones to about 4 inch wide(so far) diamond wafers.
3. There are 2 forms of doping in the process of creating the diamonds that allows for + and - parts (couldnt think of the word) that means we now have the building blocks of logic for diamond based chips.
nitpick (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Excellent heat conductivity (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea is to sell gemstones until they can start making semiconductor blanks. The diamonds will be comparatively cheap, since the vast majority of the cost to produce the diamonds is fixed.
As to DeBeers, I'm sure they'll come up with some marketing angle. Personally, after taking a university honors course in gemology, I learned that the way to tell the difference twixt 'real' and 'fake' gemstones was the 'real' ones were full of crap. The very most expensive of the 'reals' merely approached the purity of the 'fakes'.
Of course, it isn't true love unless you've spent thousands on the rock. The composition of the rock itself doesn't matter (except for the all-important crap to show it's 'real'), it's how much debt you're willing to incurr to show your love.
Re:Excellent heat conductivity (Score:5, Funny)
Please tell me you're joking: "Hi, I've no concept of fiscal responsibility. I've thrown away thousands of dollars on a bauble. Would you like to tie your economic future to mine?"
I knew this was coming (Score:5, Interesting)
-cp-
Re:I knew this was coming (Score:4, Interesting)
Gimme a nice large pegmatite full of beryl, and I'd be happy. Chromian beryl (emerald) doesn't excite me as a money-making mine, though.
Re:I knew this was coming (Score:3, Insightful)
Diamonds will never be free, as someone still has to find them, and mine them. Think of it this way: most everyone could grow tomatoes or Habanero peppers in their home, but how many do? Likewise, in mining, (a much more difficult proposition than growing vegetables) you have to buy equipment (even if it is just a pic
where are the advantages (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:where are the advantages (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Everyone has missed the obvious joke! (Score:5, Funny)
Of course. (Score:3, Interesting)
Silicon is in the same family as Carbon (same column)
As indicated by Mendeleev, the creator of the periodic table, elements in the same family share the same properties.
Carbon and Silicon share the ability to form chains of arbitrary length...this property gets weaker as you travel down the family, from infinite chains (Carbon) to max of 10 (silicon)
It only follows, naturally, that if silicon is an "okay" semiconductor, just as it is at forming repeating chains, that carbon, which forms better chains, would also be a better semiconductor.
Diamonds are just a pure carbon with a special crystal structure...so, of course, they should be semiconducting. Graphite may be also, following the same logic.
Diamonds = Love, pah! (Score:4, Funny)
I invite Mr Van Royen to visit his local pawn shop.
I'd buy them even if I knew they were fake (Score:3, Troll)
cubic zirconium (Score:5, Funny)
The South African economy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The South African economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember seeing this before (Score:3, Informative)
on NOVA [pbs.org] 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.
HEY, AMD! (Score:4, Funny)
Hardass American Businessman (Score:4, Interesting)
Call me a patriot, but I am impressed by the hardass, American businessman standing up to the entrenched, monopoly vendors. Here is free market at its best, with visionaires taking risk on new technologies, betting the farm on being the first in a new market. It will be interesting to see if both companies can co-exist, if one will knock the other out, or if DeBeers will call out Leon [imdb.com] on both of them.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they are fragile (Score:4, Informative)
PBS information (Score:5, Interesting)
PBS had a special on this back in 2000. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/diamond/ [pbs.org]
It looks like the big breakthrough is the CVD technique. The old Russian design had the problem of letting in too much nitrogen and creating only yellow diamonds. They have improved the technique but it is still harder to make clear diamonds. I read that they were going after the colored market since colored natural diamonds are more expensive. Plus it must be easier to add color with new elements than remove all the yellow. (They can add different elements to get different colors.) Expect the market in colored diamonds (especially yellow) to get cheap. (Kobe should have waited...) Of course the real volume is in clear diamonds. Hopefully the CVD technique can make cheap clear diamonds. I know they said $5 a carat, but I wouldn't trust Wired.
De Beers is 45% owned by Anglo American plc (Score:3, Informative)
I wonder whether some options trading to take advantage of a (hopefully) impending crash in the diamond market is appropriate here. I suppose it'll take a few years, which AFAICT is beyond the horizon of most options trading, isn't it?
CVD Diamond- I do this. (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting article, but it's missing some of the point. There are two issues here: fabricating substitute "gem" diamonds for jewelry, or fabricating diamond for the semiconductor industry..., or diamond coatings for wear resistance, biocompatible implants, etc. These are an entirely different beast.
CVD diamond, even in with the best of reactors, is limited by growth rates. Working with thin films is, at the moment, the only way to go. You can also only get single crystal diamond by growing on a previously obtained single crystal diamond- as they mention in the article. This is seriously limiting, and they don't mention the growth rates in the article. 5$ 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.
Re:CVD Diamond- I do this. (Score:5, Informative)
The third big challenge has been the most daunting for materials scientists: To form microchip circuits, positive and negative conductors are needed. Diamond is an inherent insulator - it doesn't conduct electricity. But both Gemesis and Apollo have been able to inject boron into the lattice, which creates a positive charge. Until now, though, no one had been able to manufacture a negatively charged, or n-type, diamond with sufficient conductivity. When I visit Butler in Washington, he can barely contain his glee. "There's been a major breakthrough," he tells me. In June, together with scientists from Israel and France, he announced a novel way of inverting boron's natural conductivity to form a boron-doped n-type diamond. "We now have a p-n junction," Butler says. "Which means that we have a diamond semiconductor that really works. I can now see an Intel diamond Pentium chip on the horizon."
Re:CVD Diamond- I do this. (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Diamond has a very high index of refractivity. It's also pretty hard.
A rucksack 'scope with uncoated optics that I could safely clean the objective lens using sandpaper sounds pretty cool. Rugged as all hell and tack sharp in the visual department. I like it!
The Heat Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm running 2 AMD XP 2000+ processors in a 12x12 room and shut the doors and it can be 100 degrees in there quickly. I'm sure it creates enough heat to raise my power bill some also but I have yet come up with a solution. I have planned on venting them out the Window but I have to handle the bug and security problem there at the same time.
Re:The Heat Issue (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Japanese research? (Score:3, Informative)
A bit of googling turned out this page [sei.co.jp] 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...
There's more to diamond than CPUs and rings (Score:3, Informative)
Excellent news.... (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's always irritated me that the price of diamond has been kept artificially high by DeBeers. Given a choice between an artificial diamonds and an artificial price.... I'll take the artificial diamond.
Besides, it's not as if I'd ever be able tell the differance. Unless of course DeBeers starts supplying a fourier transform infrared spectrometer free with every diamond. Which, as I'm a techie who likes technical toys, is the only thing that would make me cough up the DeBeers premium.
Re:Quality of computer (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:Quality of computer (Score:5, Interesting)
(some aluminum facts) [uh.edu]
I read the dead-tree version of this article last week. The prediction is not just making small gems and computer chips, but huge, pure, industrial quantities soon. Despite anything that De Beers tries to do, if chemically and structurally identical diamonds can be made, natural diamonds will collapse in value. Aluminum certainly didn't retain its value.
As to the price of chips made from diamonds, market forces will determine the fair price (and drive costs inexorably downward.) The major cost of a Silicon-based chip is not the Silicon, but the processing needed to make it function. The same will soon be true of Diamond based chips. Undoubtably there will be a steep learning curve in making diamond chips, so Silicon has at least a decade of safely being number one. Gallium Arsenide is considered superior to Silicon in many ways, but has only unseated Silicon in certain high frequency, low power, telecommunication applications. Diamond-based chips will probably infiltrate niche markets first, where price of fabrication is not a major deterrent.
No they're not (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No they're not (Score:3, Funny)
her: "What do you mean? Is one cloady and chipped and stuff?"
me: "Nope, they are both perfect and identicle."
her: "What? Is one fake?"
me: "Yes, but it's impossible to tell the difference."
her: "The one carot ring, because it's real."
me: "You can't tell the difference."
her: "You can always tell the difference between a fake diam
Diamonds aren't forever (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And what's good, too, is that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Who would want some shine stones if everyone have them? It's the false sense of rarenes that makes them valuable. Hopefully diamonds will become a commodity like just any other rock.
It won't happen over night, but it will happen in a couple of years.
It's about time that someone challenges the De Beers and sell these stones below market value. There is absolutly no reason that diamonds should continue to have such a ridiculous price.
I'm looking forward to a colapse in the pricing of diamonds where one can get a *large* diamons for a couple of bucks.
So those of you that have diamonds other than for some sentimental reason: Sell why you still can.
Re:Cool (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Screw that... screw having a motherboard laced with diamond... try a CPU that can handle multiples of the current 200 degree limit:
Five BUCKS per carat... let me repeat that. 5 dollars per carot. Damn.
You know all the effoft overclockers put into reducing heat? The complex cooling systems? The fans? The liqid nitrogen? Imagine a processor that will run at many times the current CPU upper temps and not blink. I don't give a damn if I ever where a diamond on my hand.
This is the break through that will allow Moore's law to continue to grow. Couple this with the recent things we've heard about the equivalent of Ohm's in the conservation of quantum sping, and we have the future of computing.
We may even blow Moore's law out of the water.
Re:Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, and god damn. A bit of research turns of very interesting things. It is amazing to me how things like this can sit out there a fester... all the info is out on the net. This Wired article should not be a surprise. Every night I sit at my computer with a fat pipe connection and try to think of good things to type into google. This one passed me and apparently most of us by;
From the Wired article, this is (as far as I can tell) Joshua Davis sitting in Antwerp, handing three diamonds made via chemical vapor deposition.
Another name. Only mentioned once in the aricle. One of many names. I wanted to know more. A series of google searches. the best one. [google.com]
Success.
The first one that really catches my interest. a research paper [iee.org]. A quote:
For god sacks, that is a long quote, please go read the whole thing.
If I thought it couldn't get better, the www proved me wrong.
emphasis mine. He states Jim Butler as a reference. Uh. Not only do we have the future of microprocessor technology, we have a people researching as a method to connect it to living flesh.
Obligatory Simpsons (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Simpsons (Score:3, Funny)
I can't believe we've overlooked this week's winner for so very, very long. We simply could not function without his tireless efforts. So, a round of applause for...this inanimate carbon rod!
Andrew A. Gill
Re:Cool (Score:5, Funny)
Me too. After a while though I forget what I'm reading about.
Re:Diamonds inorganic? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, but imagine the smell those burning dust bunnies will make.
Seriously though, if you are going to have something that hot, you'd need to completely change the entire mainboard design. The PCB would have to be made of more heat resistant materials (which would be trivial if the envirofreaks didn't effectively ban asbestos), and all the surrounding chips would have to be rated to deal with the oven-like heat of the CPU.
Not to mention, heat comes from power usage. We are already pushing 50-70 watts for current CPUs. Imagine having to buy a 2kw power supply for your computer. You'd need to plug it in to a special circuit like a stove or a dryer. Then imagine running the air conditioning in the summer overtime, to compensate for the 2kw heater that is running all the time (and waste money even in the winter, since heat pumps are far more efficient than resistive heat). The costs are not linear at all.
Anyway, my point is, there is an upper limit to heat dissipation possible in personal computers, even if the chip can stand it.
Scratch Proof Screens (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
The industry is geared to Si because it is cheap, can be easily made into big oriented doped single crystal ingots, the ingots can be easily converted into single crystal wafers that can easily be made into chips.
I do not think the same is true for diamond. Where a silicon ingot can be pulled with a foot diameter and a couple feet in length, the diamond grows from a seed in a prism shape, and probably with a fixed orientation. This means the orientation must be set at the time of cutting, which impacts the actual size of wafer produced. To be compatible with current machines, the wafers will have to be rounded, which is an additional cost and incurs additional losses.
The size is also an issue. The currently exploited economies of scale dictate that the bigger the wafer the better. For instance, a wafer with a diameter of 1 foot can conceivably create twice as much product as an 8 inch wafer. This means that each step in a manufacturing process can often create twice as much product in the same time with the same number of machines. This is a really big deal. To put this in perspective, it could conceivable require over 200 machines using a 10mm wafer to match the production of a single machine using a 8 inch wafer. Of course this is massively oversimplified, but the point is valid.
Really the material costs are not all that significant. The manufacturing costs are what eat all the money. The are some application where the added manufacturing costs are not going to be an issue, but I do not see mass produced electronics. If they can get to 4 inches in 5 years, and 8 inches in 10 years, we should start seeing some diamond electronics. Of course, this is also going to be much harder than they are letting on.
careful mate (Score:4, Funny)
Be careful what you wish for. If she's not computer savvy, she might get her diamond laced mother on board.
God bless you then.Re:You might need one for spellchecking (Score:4, Funny)
The OSS Community welcomes you!
Gemstones as investments. (Score:5, Interesting)
Diamond is the only gem that's still worth anything (thanks to De Boer's monopoly). With the advent of the internet, virtually anyone can order other gems directly from Thailand and the like. Sapphire and ruby prices have crashed as a result. You can get a 1 carat pigeonblood ruby for just $10 or so nowadays.
And that's not counting advances in synthetic gemstones. Hydrothermal processes for sapphire, ruby and emerald have made it virtually impossible to detect a good quality gem (most synthetic sapphire and ruby is still grown the old way though, which is easier to detect).
I personally have a roughly 10+ carat white sapphire heart and a top blood red ruby of about the same size, both synthetic. I paid about $10 each for them, including the .925 sterling silver pendant setting.
In context, natural gems like these, a few decades back, would be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Re:Gemstones as investments. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Gemstones as investments. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not for a while (Score:5, Informative)
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 [un.org] 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?"
Re:Not for a while (Score:4, Interesting)
They should market these towards geeks (Score:4, Insightful)
As a geek/technologist, i like at the "real" diamond in one hand, and the synthesized diamond on the other, and think sure, the "real" diamond is kind of cool, it was formed under impressive conditions and has usefull, interesting, and pretty properties. However the syntehsized diamond, we _made_ that. Humans made a machine in a lab that can do what takes Nature a few million tons of 2,2000 degree magma to do. THAT is impressive.
Even if they were the same price i would be tempted to go with the synthesized diamond, just out of pride for the human race. The fact that the synthesized one would likely be orders of magnitude cheaper just sweetens the deal.
And on top of that, as a geek i pay enough attention to realize what an evil company DeBeers is, that a lot of the price of a "natural" diamond is artificially inflated, and in at least some cases, possibly a lot of them, there's a lot of blood that goes into extracting the diamond and delivering it to where i could purchase it.
Finally, a few years back i remember seeing a tv show that was talking about synthesized gemstones, back when they were doing it with emeralds and rubies and such and still trying to get diamonds working. Some or all of the companies, and i don't remember if this was voluntary, or if the gemstone industries got some kind of law passed, added traces of certain chemicals to the gemstones so that they would glow if you shined certain frequences of light on them.
Now that is a marketing gimick just waiting to happen. "New synthetics diamonds! 10 times the quality for one tenth of the price! Not only are you not supporting African dictaorships if you buy from us, our diamonds glow in the dark under blacklight! How cool is that?!"
Of course another benefit of this might be that if diamond prices crash, we might stop seeing so much jewelry that's been diamond encrusted. Because of both the percieved and monetary value, jewelers seem to find it hard to resist scattering little (or large!) bits of diamond on just about any piece of jewelry they produce. This obviously increases the price (and thus the markup) and apparently a lot of people think they look better that way. Rings are especially prone to this problem. Personally i don't think diamonds are that attractive, and it annoys me that every time my girlfriend wants a present, i have to wade through about nine saphire and diamond rings/bracelets/whatever for each plain saphire item, which is usually both more attractive and cheaper.
Re:I'll never be able to afford a new PC... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'll never be able to afford a new PC... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can see it already (Score:4, Informative)
yo.
Re:Neal Stephenson (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hold on there !!!! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Hold on there !!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:just like that . . . (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:How about petroleum? (Score:3, Interesting)
Whenever you like; there is nothing particularly difficult about (for instance):
CO2+4H2-> 2H2O + CH4
But now calculate how much methane you need to provide the hydrogen and the energy to drive the reaction..
Out of interest, the formation of oil happens at temperatures of 100-140 degrees celcius (pressure is virtually irrelevant), which trandlates to 2000-5000 meters underground depending on local thermal gradients. Gas is generated at higher temperatures.
If you wanted to make a liquid fuel, I wou
Shooting glasses? I don't think so (Score:3, Informative)
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