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Science Technology

Diamond Chips as Alternative to Silicon 22

Posted by timothy from the like-a-rock dept.
John E Toughguy writes: "Cool article on the Chicago Tribune site describing Argonne National Laboratory senior scientist Dieter Gruen's use of buckyballs to create tiny (3 to 5 nanometers tiny) diamond crystals that may prove useful in microelectromechanical sytems."
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Diamond Chips as Alternative to Silicon More

Diamond Chips as Alternative to Silicon

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  • $$$ Computer (Score:2, Funny)

    by Arallok ( 555634 )
    Good thing the diamonds are very small, otherwise computer price will sky rocket.

    Hopefully jewelers won't design the sterling silver computer, or the 24 carat gold computer (perfect for renewing wedding vows!)

    • Actually, factory-manufactured diamonds are relatively cheap, but they are of extremely low quality compared to naturally found diamonds (the crystals of industrial diamonds are nowhere near perfect, while those of naturally-found diamonds, which cooled much more slowly and evenly, are beautiful (and valuable). For industrial applications, though, both natural and man-made work equally well).

  • Spur Innovation and conversation (Score:4, Informative)

    by C4v3_7r0ll ( 551132 ) <cave_troll@prontomail.com> on Wednesday May 29, 2002 @09:45AM (#3601918)

    Just to spur some conversation, I offer my synopsis of the article.

    Dieter Gruen has invented buckyball based diamonds that have the ability to conduct electricity when Nitrogen is in between the molecules. They are also extremely small and the combination of these features makes them ideal for MEMS (microelectromechanical structures). MEMS are currently used in mostly medical implementations including micro-drug injections and are silicon based. Silicon is easy to break and cannot withstand high tempurature applications such as a car engine. The use of diamond based MEMS would create as yet unrealized markets for medical and non-medical devices. Although the article didn't specifically mention it, MEMS are the key to most nanotechnology which is a big venture capital buzzword nowadays.

    • Yes but a diamond crystal isn't composed of molecules. It's a packed structure of carbon atoms (about 1000 of them in this case). You could think of the entire crystal as a molecule, but in some case they can weigh several kilograms (not diamond crystals usually)!

      The article doesn't give much information and is pretty poorly written, IMHO. It says nothing about how the buckminster fullerene molecules (chemists tend to hate the name "buckyball") are used to form these tiny crystals. You would need only 20 or so C60 molecules to form a C1000 diamond crystal, so that might be something to do with it.
  • I thought that buckyball carbon bonding was totally different from the type of bonding in diamonds...... so what the hell is going on here??
    • Well, both buckyballs and diamond have carbon-carbon bonds :) (admittedly the fullerenes have bonds more similar to graphite than diamond).

      But the article just says that the buckyballs are the raw material - and they WILL provide carbon atoms which, at the surface, are arranged very similarly to diamond. Supposedly the diamond crystals have only about 1000 atoms - so we're talking about a crystal that has been formed from as few as 30 buckyballs. Suppose they only use the surface from one side of a buckyball to build up the crystals - we're still talking about being able to build the crystals layer by layer, using the buckyballs to supply an entire layer at a time.

      I suspect that doping (similar to P or N doping in silicon) the diamond can be done by putting the dopants inside the buckyballs to accomplish a MUCH more even distribution of dopant atoms than can be accomplished by diffusion into silicon.
  • If the entire computer industry switches to diamonds, that could cause one of two things:

    1. Prices will rise, as the industry has to compete with jewelers selling rings and such.

    2. Prices on diamonds will go down, as more companies will mine them and introduce more diamonds onto the market. After all, diamonds are not as rare as the big jewelry companies would like people to believe.
    • Since these diamonds are only a few nanometers wide, they won't have much effect on jewelry costs.

      Unless, of course, somebody produces a low cost and fashionable electron microscope so that they can be admired at a party :)
    • Assuming the quantities of diamond used are significant to envoke market forces normally it still shouldn't make a difference.
      After all, diamonds are not as rare as the big jewelry companies would like people to believe.
      This is an understatement,the scarcity of diamonds is entirly artifical, a heightened demand will only result in the consortiums mining just the few more necessary to fulfill that demand and other than that keep everything else at the status quo that has been working so well until now. The thing I might wonder about is artificial diamonds. I've heard they can create very small, low quality diamonds artificially, perhaps that would be sufficient for this process, but I know very little and it could very well be a mistake in facts on my part, (got to work no time for google:)
      • The thing I might wonder about is artificial diamonds. I've heard they can create very small, low quality diamonds artificially, perhaps that would be sufficient for this process, but I know very little and it could very well be a mistake in facts on my part

        Synthetic diamond gemstones have been around for quite a while now, though only small ones are cheap enough to be worthwhile to produce. They're commonly used. I don't know what the most common method used to produce them is nowadays, but older schemes made them by applying pressure directly to carbon samples.

        Industrial diamond is almost all synthetic. It's produced, more or less, by setting off a bomb on top of carbon powder and diamond dust. The result doesn't look pretty, but is functional.

        The semiconductor industry already produces diamond films for a few applications by the same methods they use for other types of film (CVD, etc). You typically don't use buckyballs as the carbon source, as other cheaper chemicals work just as well ("cheap" being relative, as whatever's being used has to be ultra-pure to avoid defects). In practice, diamond-based integrated circuits would be manufactured using techniques like this.

        People have been experimenting with diamond-based integrated circuits for a while now. They can operate at much higher temperatures than most other IC technologies, but doping is more difficult (requires much higher dopant concentrations, and there may be other problems).

        Diamond MEMS would most logically be produced by methods similar to diamond ICs, to make maximum use of existing technology.
  • Anybody else read The Gap Cycle [beeb.net] of books from Stephen R. Donaldson?

    If I remember correctly, all of the "datacores" used to log events in the ships were made of SOD (Silicon on Diamond) chips. The datacores could not change state, but add it.

    Really interesting read if you like Sci-Fi.

    • Yes, but you see, that was fiction...
    • I'm currently on the last book in that series. Having already read Thomas Covenent, I'm left with the question: Does Stephen Donaldson just hate all of his characters?

      Not that that would separate him from the Sword of Truth series or the Song of Ice and Fire series...
      • I don't think he hates all of his characters, per se, but his style is for realistic characters.

        The most disturbing thing about his books is the little bit of ourselves we see in the characters. I identify rather closely with Thomas Covenant and reading the two Unbeliever series was, at times, very painful.

        The prime reason I enjoy Donaldson so much is the good-to-bad ratio he uses in the writing. His heroes are never bright and shiny Mother Theresa types; they all have faults, some of them overwhelming.

        Thomas Covenant was a leper who's wife left him when his leprosy was discovered, taking his only child. His town hates him, and he hates them back; he hates himself because of what he's become (Leper outcast unclean!) and he can't seem to find beauty or peace anywhere in the world. Yet, when confronted with an overwhelming challenge he doesn't even acknowledge as real, he rises to the occasion and learns to live with his faults rather than hide them behind anger.

        His characters always seem to be more human than most books -- and sometimes more human than real life.

        • No, I wasn't criticising the characters. I was just commenting on how much Donaldson tortures them. I'm not complaining - they're a good read - I just thought it was funny how he kept making the poor people's lives worse and worse.

          Eh, dramatic tension.

          • No criticism intended, by the way. I agree.

            I thought it was funny that no matter how much worse off they were, they could always seems to find just a little bit from somewhere deep inside to keep doing what they thought was right.

            That's funny in an inspiring kind of way.

  • See this paper:

    http://www.blacklightpower.com/pdf/technical/HDL C% 20Article%204_4_02.pdf

    for a revolutionary new way to manufacture diamond films.

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