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Science Technology

Diamonds As Room-Temperature Superconductors 318

Posted by timothy from the repurposing dept.
Stormalong writes "This article describes research into using diamonds as room-temperature superconductors. If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"
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Diamonds As Room-Temperature Superconductors More

Diamonds As Room-Temperature Superconductors

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  • Hmm. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Renraku ( 518261 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:39PM (#5681161) Homepage
    Now we can have computer rooms that look like levels from Megaman.

  • If true, will it be relevant? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dtolton ( 162216 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:39PM (#5681168) Homepage
    It sounds interesting, although it's hard to put too much weight
    into it yet because their results have yet to be independently
    verified. He also hasn't even shown it can "expel mangetic
    fields to conclusivlely prove that the state is
    superconducting."

    At least the heading of the article was posted with a question
    mark, rather than as an authoritative claim.

    If the claim proves to be true, it would be interesting to see
    what practical application it can be put to. Will the fact that
    it could be a replacement for "hot" cathodes in TV tubes even be
    relevant by the time this technology is ready for practical
    application. With some of the other new technologies that are
    on the horizon such as OLED's, it will be interesting to see
    what the life span of the bulky CRT will be.

    • Re:If true, will it be relevant? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by YetAnotherAnonymousC ( 594097 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:45PM (#5681244)
      He also hasn't even shown it can "expel mangetic fields to conclusivlely prove that the state is superconducting"

      I Am Not A Physicist, but this point makes me especially skeptical. Isn't this test (showing that a magnetic field is perfectly cancelled out within the semiconductor) relatively easy to conduct? Wouldn't the researcher have performed this test before making any claims?

      The only thing I can figure is that the hardness and cost of diamond makes it difficult to get a specimen that has the correct topology for the test...

      • Re:If true, will it be relevant? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This isn't my area and the article is a little weak on the details, but I think it is just a superconducting layer and it only superconducting across the layer (not along it). It's probably not of much use, except inside a chip.

        I got this from one sentance: Current continues to flow from the diamond cathode through this layer to the anode, even though there is no voltage across the layer - a sign of superconductivity.

  • Engagement? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:39PM (#5681170)
    perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring

    You forget that most /.'ers associate "engagement" with a Counterstrike session ...

    • Re:Engagement? (Score:5, Funny)

      by red_dragon ( 1761 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:02PM (#5681366) Homepage

      You forget that most /.'ers associate "engagement" with a Counterstrike session ...

      And with good reason. Did you actually believe that marriage was any different? ;)

      • Alot of them sure act like they are "protecting the VIP."

        Then there are the ones that start an argument and do their best to make sure you can't defuse it.

        Then there are the accusations from no where that hit you like a headshot.

        And of course if you lose you get kicked out; and only then you can see the situation from a better perspective after it is too late to do anything about it.

  • Diamonds as CPUs (Score:5, Funny)

    by bujoojoo ( 161227 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:39PM (#5681173)
    "CPUs are Forever" is not conducive to Moore's Law.

    • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dhovis ( 303725 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:45PM (#5681243)

      Eh....

      Diamonds aren't forever, they are only a metastable state.



      Besides, "A Diamond is Forever" is a DeBeers marketing sloagan created in the 1920s, not some ancient piece of wisdom.

      • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hero ( 25043 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:52PM (#5681295) Journal
        That's what really pisses me off. Diamonds are a very very useful natural resource, but instead of being able to take advantage of that, we're forced to pay huge prices only to have them end up as decorations on some floozy. deBeers is evil.

        -hero.
        • Artificial diamonds aren't really that expensive.
        • well, rich people used to use aluminum plates(to eat from) when it was expensive, guess there could have been better uses for that back then too.

          rare==expensive==show off==beautiful.

          and as said artificial diamonds are so cheap that theres not much point using real natural diamonds for industrial purposes, the only point why they're expensive is that people are ready to pay for them, like any other collectibles really (famous painting originals, pearls & all)...

          • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:3, Insightful)

            by _ph1ux_ ( 216706 )
            I dont think that the price of artificial diamonds will stay as low as whatever they may be if all of a sudden there is a new application for them.

            The artificial diamond makers will then try to pull a "deBeers" on the mrket - which may cause real ones to either drop or rise in price..

            DeBeers cartel will either shorten suply of real ones in order to raise price. If there is a huge flood of artificial diamonds it would cause the already super abundant diamonds to seem more rare.

            Another angle might be attem

            • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Wavicle ( 181176 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @06:57PM (#5682447)
              The artificial diamond makers will then try to pull a "deBeers" on the mrket..

              "de Beers" was able to pull a "de Beers" because the diamond deposits were geographically localized. Artificial diamonds can be produced anywhere. If demand surges, entrepreneurs will fill the supply void and prices will be kept low.

        • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:4, Interesting)

          by einhverfr ( 238914 ) <chris.traversNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:45PM (#5682011) Homepage Journal
          That's what really pisses me off. Diamonds are a very very useful natural resource, but instead of being able to take advantage of that, we're forced to pay huge prices only to have them end up as decorations on some floozy. deBeers is evil.

          I am really lucky ;-) My fiancee likes diamonds about as much as I do (not that much). Her engagement ring has a lovely blue zircon in it. (People forget that zircons and cubic zirconia are NOT the same thing-- actually yellow zircons used to be among the most treasured gems of the ancient world).

          Only on slashdot would people talk about giving engagement cpu's.....

          • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:3, Informative)

            by dhovis ( 303725 )

            I am really lucky

            Me too. I managed to talk my wife out of getting a diamond on ethical grounds. We went with moissanite [moissanite.com] instead. Her ring has a green moissanite flanked by two clear moissanite stones.

            The funny thing about clear moissanite is that people refuse to believe it is not diamond, even when they are told directly. Moissanite actually has a higher index of refraction than diamond, and so it sparkles more! Plus, moissanite only costs one tenth as much as an equivelant quality diamond. Most

          • " actually yellow zircons used to be among the most treasured gems of the ancient world"

            Does that mean you gave here a tin ring?

        • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:3, Informative)

          by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
          The diamonds we see in jewelery are far from the only diamonds out there. After a diamond is mined, only a certain few are good enough quality for that, and the vast majority are considered "industrial grade," for use in cutting tools, etc.

          AFAIK, man-made diamonds are never good enough for jewelery and are alwasys considered industrial grade.

          On top of that, most of the price of diamond jewelery comes not necessarily from the stone but the skill that went into crafting it. The person shaping the stone ha

      • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:5, Interesting)

        by pfankus ( 535004 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:09PM (#5681417) Homepage
        Besides, "A Diamond is Forever" is a DeBeers marketing sloagan created in the 1920s, not some ancient piece of wisdom.

        ...which was featured in /. a little bit ago here. [slashdot.org] br>
        The original article [theatlantic.com] is quite a good read about the diamond industry and how *not pricy* actual diamonds really are. The true price seems to be paid in marketing, inflated costs, monopoly of the industry, and exploitation of indiginous people. Hell, you can make diamonds from the ashes [thebostonchannel.com] of your dead greatgrandmother!

        • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:2, Interesting)

          by stratjakt ( 596332 )
          A cut, polished, precious gem calibre diamond with no significant flaws is quite rare. No doubt the cost to the consumer is marked up quite a bit, but it's a little like saying "theres only a few hundered dollars worth of materials in a Ferrari". It may be true, but there's a whole lot more to a Ferrari than some fiberglass, steel and aluminum.

          Anyways, it's worth noting that the DeBeers monopoly got a huge kick in the kiwis a couple years ago when a small (for the industry) startup beat them to the disco

          • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:3, Insightful)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )
            it's worth noting that the DeBeers monopoly got a huge kick in the kiwis a couple years ago when a small (for the industry) startup beat them to the discovery of huge diamond lodes up in the canadian arctic

            Anyone got a reference for this?

      • Re:Diamonds as CPUs (Score:5, Funny)

        by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:02PM (#5681760) Homepage Journal

        Besides, "A Diamond is Forever" is a DeBeers marketing sloagan created in the 1920s, not some ancient piece of wisdom.

        DeBeers has recognized that it needs to market more effectively to the Slashdot crowd, many of whom have yet to make a substantial investment in a diamond.

        Their new slogan will be

        "Diamonds May be Thermodynamically Unfavorable at 1 atm and 300K, But Decay on a Time Scale Much Longer Than Your Marriage."

  • Loved One (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:40PM (#5681176)

    Don't you mean "one day your loved one might BE a diamond CPU"?

  • If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

    Arghh!!! paradox!!! get it off, get it off!!!
  • I've heard that diamonds are priced a lot higher than they have to be, because their scarcity is tightly controlled by the people who control the major sources of them. I wonder, if they turn out to be a source of superconductors, if the world might pressure them in to lowering prices to reasonable levels.
    • Actually, alot of research into manufactured diamonds will be more effective in causing problems with deBeers' monopoly. This will likely cause such research to be promoted more, and iirc industrial grade diamonds have been manufactured for some time now (but are not clear, or pretty; but certainly viable for this use). Even if this does prove true, how would you create a 'wire' of diamond? A more likely solution will come from bucky-ball research [3d carbon tube molecules, likely with a large ion trapped i
      • deBeers has already seemingly purchased the rights to such technologies in the past. deBeers does to artificial diamond technology what the oil industry has long done to alternative fuel/energy sources.

        Long story short, the technology to create non-industrial grade diamonds, flawless and in almost any color, for dollars each, has existed for years. deBeers visited the plant and it was shutdown the next day. Hmm....wonder what happened there...go figure...

        In various parts of the world, diamonds are a di

        • Re:Diamond prices (Score:5, Informative)

          by tybalt44 ( 176219 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:15PM (#5681447) Journal
          Remember, the next time you buy a diamond for your sweetie, slave (and probably child) labor, blood, sweat and tears literally goes into each one. Ahh...nothing says love like the suffering of your fellow man. If this concerns you, then you should probably buy Canadian Arctic Diamonds [canadianar...iamond.com] which are exploitation- and conflict-free.
        • I was under the impression that such technology was relatively new, and immature [www.gemesis.com for example]; care to point to sources to the contrary?
          • The artificial diamond production technology is relatively old. Of course quality varies and is improving. Just here in town there are two companies that make then and they've been here as long as I can recall. I've not read it, but a history of the diamond manufacturing industry can be found in the book The Diamond Makers by Robert Hazen [amazon.com]
        • deBeers visited the plant and it was shutdown the next day. Hmm....wonder what happened there...go figure...

          Wow, what an extraordinary claim! Care to back it up with some sort of evidence?

          --grendel drago
    • Those are precious gem quality. Industral quality diamonds can be made through some process, or made from the precious gem rejects. My guess is that they're using industrial quality, but I should go RTFA. :)

    • Re:Diamond prices (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Van Halen ( 31671 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:56PM (#5681330) Journal
      Well, as it stands right now, De Beers has a worldwide monopoly on natural diamonds. They have enough stockpiles that they could flood the market at any time and cause diamonds to become cheaper than cubic zirconium. Or so I've read.

      In recent years, some scientists have been able to product synthetic diamonds - only distinguishable from "real" diamonds by the fact that the synthetics glow under phosphorescent light (or something like that). I believe the natural diamonds don't do this because of their imperfections. They looked at the possibility of selling synthetics as an alternative in the gemstone market, but De Beers simply threatened to run them out of business with the aforementioned market flooding. The cost of producing synthetics would remain mostly constant, and it wouldn't be worth it if diamond prices took a nosedive.

      Now, enter this new possibility (they're still investigating whether it's even true, according to the article). If it becomes economically desirable to produce synthetic diamonds for superconducting purposes, I wonder if that would alter the gemstone diamond market? Perhaps producers could make synthetics primarily for superconducting applications, but slowly insert more into the gemstone market, pulling it out from under De Beers' noses. Eventually they'd be forced to flood the market and the end of an evil, expertly marketed monopoly could come to pass? One can only hope!

      The above summary was from memory based on what I've read. I could have gotten some things wrong, so feel free to google for links. I'm too lazy. ;-)

      • Re:Diamond prices (Score:4, Informative)

        by PCBman! ( 605303 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:15PM (#5681446)
        They glow because they're doped--rubies were shown on a PBS show a few years back. Lab created gems are generally doped with elements to make them distinguishable somehow--don't think scientists and engineers don't get bribed to produce a perfect gem.

        Yes, single crystal 'gems' created in the lab are for all intents and purposes, perfect, they have to be to be used in any experiment concerning the creation of semiconducting devices.

        It probably would NOT change the gemstone market due to cost of growing diamonds. IIRC, CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) is currently the only way to produce diamonds for manufacturing. This is in no way as cheap or easy to do is pulling a 'perfect' silicon ingot out of a molten bath.

        • Re:Diamond prices (Score:5, Informative)

          by dhovis ( 303725 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @06:16PM (#5682165)
          They glow because they're doped--rubies were shown on a PBS show a few years back. Lab created gems are generally doped with elements to make them distinguishable somehow--don't think scientists and engineers don't get bribed to produce a perfect gem.

          Uh, What?. Synthetic gemstones are chemically indistinguishable from the real thing. For a while, the distinguishing characteristic of lab created gemstones was their remarkable lack of defects. However, enterprising companies that make synthetic stones have figured out how to include the defects that you normally see in natural stones. So you can no longer tell the difference. There is no law to require they be marked, and there is no inscentive for the manufacturers to do so. If you saw stones that glowed, they were probably made that way for industrial use. Ti-doped Sapphire (Al2O3) is used for "tunable" lasers, for example. In fact, the first laser was made from ruby (Cr-doped Sapphire). These days people can make synthetic sapphires the width of a telephone pole and several feet long. They are used as windows on the barcode scanners in the supermarket because sapphire is much more scratch resistant than glass.

          Frankly I don't understand why people value stones that were dug up out of the ground more than ones created in the lab. It's not like there is a real difference. Besides, if you actually visited a gemstone mine, you would probably lose all the romantic ideas you have about the origin of the stones.

          As far as synthetic diamonds go, there are several possible ways to produce them. CVD is commonly done to produce diamond films for research. GE Superabrasives [abrasivesnet.com] produces industrial diamonds using a high pressure process for decades. The diamonds are small, but they are cost effective. GE also produces "clarity enhanced" diamonds. They take natural diamonds that are lousy color and treat them to make them a more appealing color. Can you tell? I doubt it.

          I'm a materials scientist, and I suspect that synthetic diamonds are less than a decade off. When that happens, the whole house of cards that is the diamond industry will come crashing down. Diamonds are not rare, but DeBeers controls most of the supply. When they loose that control, diamonds will crash to a price befitting their rarety.

          And don't go around thinking that diamonds have ever been a good investment. The vast majority of diamonds actually depreciate relative to inflation.

      • My wife's coworker got a $20,000 diamond engagement ring recently. Nothing would make me smile more than learning it was worth $20. :)

        C//

    • What slashdotters would demand... (Score:5, Funny)

      by GQuon ( 643387 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:57PM (#5681339) Journal
      would be that they are "free as in deBeers".

  • engagement (Score:5, Funny)

    by frizz ( 91565 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:42PM (#5681200)
    What better way to say "forever" than with a diamond? What better way to say "maybe 18 months" than with a cpu?

  • Thermal and Electrical Conductivity (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Michael.Forman ( 169981 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:42PM (#5681203) Homepage Journal

    High electrical conductivity and high thermal conductivity tend to run together. For instance copper has an electrical conductivity of 5.8x10^7 S/m and a thermal conductivity of 200 W/mK.

    A notable exception is diamond with a low electrical conductivity on the order of 1 S/m and a high thermal conductivity of 700 W/mK.

    Because of diamond's superior thermal conductivity and low electrical conductivity, it functions as an excellent material for use in a heat sink [sei.co.jp].

    What interests me is, that by adding free electrons by doping the diamond with oxygen is he seeing actual superconductivity or just the high conductivity one would expect, if diamond had free electrons.

    Michael.

    Visit das Schlößl. [michael-forman.com]
    • High electrical conductivity and high thermal
      conductivity do tend to run together, but exceptions
      are numerous, including sapphire which (in some
      range of temperatures) is actually a better heat
      conductor than copper, yet is an hard insulator.
      A slightly worse heat conductor, alumina, is
      also a hard insulator.

    • Re:Thermal and Electrical Conductivity (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bender_ ( 179208 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:46PM (#5681637) Journal
      High electrical conductivity and high thermal conductivity tend to run together. For instance copper has an electrical conductivity of 5.8x10^7 S/m and a thermal conductivity of 200 W/mK.

      This is known as Wiedeman-Franz Law in Physics. It describes the relationship between eletron heat transfer and conductivity. However it is only valid for Metals. Heat transfer in semiconductors is dominated by lattice vibration transport. Due to the bandgap there is little phonon/electron interaction.

      A notable exception is diamond with a low electrical conductivity on the order of 1 S/m and a high thermal conductivity of 700 W/mK.

      Its not an exception, its a semiconductor with a large bandgap and behaves exactly as expected.

      • mod parent up, Bender is right on the money.

        Originally the Weiderman-Franz law was said to apply to *all* materials, so yes, Diamond was an exception. However, people soon learned about lattice vibrations and disproved^H^H^H^H refined Wiederman-Franz law to only deal with metals.

        On inreresting point is that Diamond has the highest thermal conductivity of *all* non-superconducting materials. Put that on your OCed CPU and smoke it!

  • Obligatory Simpsons Quote (Score:3, Funny)

    by dr_dank ( 472072 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:42PM (#5681206) Homepage Journal
    "If it is not superconductivity then it must be violating the second law of thermodynamics," he says.

    "In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
  • so what cool things would we get from a room temperature superconductor? All I can think of is maglev trains, but I know that's betraying a huge lack of knowledge.

    Does a lot depend on how cheap we can mine or manufacture these diamonds?

    • Re:so what cool things (Score:5, Informative)

      by egomaniac ( 105476 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:06PM (#5681406) Homepage
      The single most important development that would come out of a room-temperature superconductor would be the elimination of batteries, fuel cells, gas tanks, and every other such power storage technology.

      Because a superconductor conducts with literally zero resistance, you can create a ring of superconducting material, pump as much current into it as it will tolerate, and just let the current cycle forever. No degradation whatsoever. Then when you want power, you just tap into the ring and pull it out on demand. Superconducting rings are real devices, by the way -- they're just big and expensive and require cryogenics.

      If we could make them out of something that operated at room temperature, then we could (probably) make very small superconducting rings, and if the power density were high enough, we could use them instead of batteries or fuel tanks. And they would never, ever wear out, no matter how many times you charged or discharged them. The amount of power they could contain is dependent on the superconducting material in question, but a high-power-density room-temperature superconductor (if such a thing is possible) would eliminate all of mankind's power storage and transmission problems. The only concern left would be generation.
      • Because a superconductor conducts with literally zero resistance, you can create a ring of superconducting material, pump as much current into it as it will tolerate, and just let the current cycle forever. No degradation whatsoever.

        The coil energy is stored in the form of a magnetic field (the coil is a giant solenoid). The stored energy will eventually bleed off through magnetic interactions with the environment.

        Then when you want power, you just tap into the ring and pull it out on demand.

        Yikes.

        • Tapping directly works fine. (Score:5, Informative)

          by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:24PM (#5681875)
          Yikes. If you try to "tap in" to an inductor, it will produce an enormous voltage and immediately arc to close the circuit. The only way to get energy out of a superconducting solenoid is through some magnetic interaction.

          If you pick the number of windings carefully, tapping directly into the inductor works just fine.

          The inductor wants to maintain the current flowing through the coil. If that is the amount of current you expect to draw for your load, both load and coil will be perfectly happy in the new configuration. If you wish to draw less current (or tolerate interruptions without arcing), drop a resistor in parallel with the load. This will limit voltage across the load to the amount needed to push the coil's current through the resistor.

          When you aren't using the load, of course, you short across it so as to reduce resistive power loss. Typically this switching is actually performed by having a closed coil, and heating the part you want to cut out above the superconducting breakdown temperature, if I understand correctly.

          The only design difficulty is that this requires a large number of windings (sheet current is typically millions of amps or more, which means you need millions of windings for a load that draws 1A).
      • The single most important development that would come out of a room-temperature superconductor would be the elimination of batteries, fuel cells, gas tanks, and every other such power storage technology.

        All the superconductors I've read about stop being superconductors when exposed to a strong magnetic field. Wouldn't this keep you from increasing the current arbitrarily? If so wouldn't you possibly get more power per gram or power per m^3 with a battery/fuel cell? Superconductors might still make great s
      • Because a superconductor conducts with literally zero resistance, you can create a ring of superconducting material, pump as much current into it as it will tolerate, and just let the current cycle forever. No degradation whatsoever. Then when you want power, you just tap into the ring and pull it out on demand.

        The problem is that storage density is limited both by the maximum magnetic field your superconductors can tolerate, and by the tensile strength of your coil (interaction between the field and the
    • Electrical power distribution has horrible losses in long-distance transmission. Assuming the material is cheap enough, and can be used in cables, and that "room temperature" covers normal outside temperatures as well, you could get much more efficient power transmission. Reduce the number of new generating plants needed, reduce emissions, etc.

    • Re:so what cool things (Score:4, Informative)

      by reverseengineer ( 580922 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:49PM (#5682037)
      Superconductors have a number of important uses in analytical instruments, too. A superconducting magnet sits at the heart of most nuclear magnetic resonance machines, as such magnets are capable of carrying enormous currents with almost no resistance, enabling them to produce magnetic fields of over 20T (400,000 times the strength of the magnetic field of the earth). Most of these magnets are made from alloys of niobium, with critical temperatures (the temp below which superconductivity occurs) around 23 Kelvin, meaning they need liquid helium to cool them. I happen to have a student job dispensing cryogens for research groups on campus- we charge about 4 bucks a liter for liquid helium, and some groups will go through a full 65L dewar in a couple days. Efforts have been made to move to the Type II (cuprate ceramic) superconductors discovered in the late 1980s, but as others have mentioned, ceramic can't be extruded into wire the way most metals can. Still, there is significant financial incentive to use Type II materials- liquid nitrogen, which boils at 77K, only costs about 20 cents per liter. Of course, with a room-temperature superconductor, there would be no cooling expenses, and there would also be no need for bulky cryostats surrounding equipment- it's likely we could see mobile MRI and NMR machines.

      In addition to their uses as magnetic coils, superconductors can be used to exploit something nifty called the Josephson effect: if you separate two superconductors by a tiny insulating gap, a supercurrent of Cooper pairs can quantum tunnel across the gap. This effect can be used in a device known as a SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device), which is essentially a fantastically sensitive magnetometer- some SQUIDs can detect fields of less than a picotesla. This has already had important applications in materials science- there are scanning-SQUID microscopes, and is finding a number of uses in medicine- specifically measuring the magnetic activity of the brain and heart. Also, SQUIDs will probably have a future in computers, as hyperfast switches, sensitive hard disk heads, or as sensors used in quantum computers, detecting the state of a qubit. IBM tried to make a computer using Josephson junctions as switches back in the late 1970s- there were a number of hurdles that prevented this device from becoming a reality, mostly the incredible rate at which "conventional" silicon chip ICs were improved, and the fact that this conventional technology does not require you to immerse your computer in liquid helium.

      And yeah, there could finally be maglev trains- those operate off of the Meissner effect, discovered in the 1930s- superconductors are perfectly diamagnetic- they will expel any external magnetic field, causing the magnet (or superconductor) to be levitated. This is the effect that the scientist who observed the possible diamond RTS admits he has not done experiments to check, and it's the effect I'd really need evidence of in order to believe his findings.
  • (to the tune of I'm My Own Grandpa)

    I'm my own CPU... [slashdot.org]

  • If successful, perhaps one day you could give your (Score:3, Funny)

    by Typingsux ( 65623 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:46PM (#5681256)
    love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

    That's great! Then I can base my next CPU purchase on 6-8 weeks of my salary.

  • If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

    Wow; the geek factor of that quote is off the charts!

    "Professor Frink, Professor Frink, He makes you laugh, he makes you think...."

  • Extra Links For This Story (Score:5, Informative)

    by cybrpnk2 ( 579066 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:48PM (#5681270) Homepage
    SciFi Today ran this story a couple of days ago with LOTS of interesting extra links here [scifitoday.com].

  • The only conceivable possibility... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:53PM (#5681308) Homepage
    he believes that the results of his experiments ... can only be explained by a new type of superconducting state. "If it is not superconductivity then it must be violating the second law of thermodynamics," he says.

    Yep. Once you exclude the possiblility that you somehow screwed up your experiment you can safely conclude the only possibility is violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

    -

  • big whup. you still can't make wires (Score:5, Insightful)

    by js7a ( 579872 ) <james@bov i k . o rg> on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:55PM (#5681320) Homepage Journal
    Firstly, I read about this in sci.physics.* or some metafilter rss some days ago. It's still very theoretical that any kind of large mass production is even possible, let alone practical.

    Even if it turns out to be practical, there is still the problem faced by the ceramic superconductors: even if you can get them to ambient temperatures, they still are brittle, rigid, and unmalleable and therefore totally unlike wires. The best you could hope for is to lay these things end-to-end in a trench by the side of the road, and the first earthquake or vibrational disturbance that comes along is going to snap, crack, and pop the circuit open. Unlike wires and fiber optics, which at least stand a chance of anything short of a backhoe.

    Ordinary wind power is of far more practical importance than superconductors, fusion, fuel cells, and solar energy combined. However, Slashdot editors regularly pick those topics for the front page. In the rare event that /. does something on wind power, it's always in the non-front-page "Science" section. Come on, "stuff that matters" should actually matter. Did you know that the entire U.S. electrical grid could be powered by less than 150,000 modern wind turbines?

    • "Did you know that the entire U.S. electrical grid could be powered by less than 150,000 modern wind turbines?"
      How many acres does it take to hold that many wind turbines? How many of them need to be running at capacity at one time to power the entire U.S. electrical grid? All of them? How many would we need to guarantee that 150000 were running strong at all times, and how many acres would THAT take?

      • Re:OT:wind turbines (Score:4, Informative)

        by js7a ( 579872 ) <james@bov i k . o rg> on Monday April 07, 2003 @06:13PM (#5682148) Homepage Journal
        How many acres does it take to hold that many wind turbines?

        Well, first off, as someone else pointed out, I should have said 1.5 million turbines, not 150,000, so as not to assume constant peak output as I had mistakenly done. However, each one of those turbines takes only 36 square meters [windpower.org], meaning that all 1.5 million would take less than 14,000 acres, or about as much oak forest that is lost each year in California alone [californiaoaks.org], or less than twice the area of the Stanford University campus. [stanford.edu]

        That power costs about 4 cents per killowatt hour, compared to 3 cents for poorly-scrubbed coal (compared to European scrubbing standards, which result in 4 cents/kwh), anywhere from 7 to 15 cents per kilowatt hour for natural gas (depending on market rates with occasional shortages) 11 cents/kwh for nuclear (plus hidden externalities for waste disposal). In other words, it's the best deal around.

        How many of them need to be running at capacity at one time to power the entire U.S. electrical grid?

        Right, you hit the nail on the head for the 150,000 figure. Again, I should have said 1.5 million for average output values. The occasional drop caused by widespread windlessness could be backed up by hydroelectric power stations, or storage systems [protonenergy.com].

    • Ordinary wind power is of far more practical importance than superconductors, fusion, fuel cells, and solar energy combined

      That's a very profound assertion, considering wind power *IS* solar energy.

    • Did you know that the entire U.S. electrical grid could be powered by less than 150,000 modern wind turbines?

      Global wind transports are an important atmospheric commodity to transport heat around the globe. They're also very important for spreading pollen and seeds, and other biological necessities.

      Sure, windpower doesn't produce CO2 or other pollutants. But most proponents entirely ignore the other environmental impacts it would have, such as reducing intra-continental air transfer (ie, there's less

      • Even if the entire planet converted to 100% wind-powered electricity overnight, the drag on wind flow from all the turbines would be tiny compared to the lost drag caused by deforestation over the past decade alone.

    • Re:big whup. you still can't make wires (Score:5, Informative)

      by TechnoWeenie ( 250857 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:29PM (#5681901)
      Did you know that the entire U.S. electrical grid could be powered by less than 150,000 modern wind turbines?

      I did not know this, so I did some quick googling and found some interesting numbers. According to the DOE the total U.S. generation of electricity for 1999 was 3691 billion kilowatt hours.
      http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epav1/i ntro.html#tab1

      According to the Danish Windpower Industry Association, a modern wind turbine will generate about 2 to 3 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year.
      http://www.windpower.org/faqs.htm#anchor727849

      If these numbers (and my math) is right, your conclusion is off by about an order of magnitude

  • Engagement Rings (Score:3, Funny)

    by breon.halling ( 235909 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:57PM (#5681336)

    "If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

    That's assuming you don't ever want to get married. =p

  • Prove your love (Score:5, Funny)

    by jonerik ( 308303 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:57PM (#5681341)
    If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

    Because, God knows, women can be counted on for preferring a practical gift over a romantic one.

    • If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

      Because, God knows, women can be counted on for preferring a practical gift over a romantic one.

      Which way are you joking? :-) This is why DeBeers had to spend so much money on their advertising campaign in the 1920s; why they had to make a movie thing of surprising the prospective bride with a ring; because, given the choice of him spending two months salary on a ring or on the downpayment on a house, h

  • Oracle + Diamond CPU + Intel = Unbreakable Diamond Inside

  • Screw the superconductivity, the real discovery is (Score:5, Informative)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:59PM (#5681353) Homepage
    Room temp superconductivity is nifty. What's (literally) incredible is that the guy is claiming to have produced "Bose-Einstein-type condensate" at room temperature, as opposed to the usual few-billionths of a degree above absolute zero [colorado.edu].

    I find "experimental error" to be far more plausible, but of course it's hard to know without seeing both the original researcher's work as well as third-party confirmation results.

    --
    • I haven't checked out his papers but the article
      doesn't make it sound like that is what he claims.
      You have to realize that there are many similarities
      between a BEC state and a Cooper pair SC state, so
      that some theorists will be loose with their
      terminology. He seems to mainly claim that the
      electronic density is high enough for a condensed
      state to develop. If more experiments show that
      amgnetic field is expelled and there is a state
      with coherent phase (ODLRO) then it will get
      real exciting real fast. Until then

    • Re:Screw the superconductivity, the real discovery (Score:4, Informative)

      by wass ( 72082 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:56PM (#5681711)
      Room temp superconductivity is nifty. What's (literally) incredible is that the guy is claiming to have produced "Bose-Einstein-type condensate" at room temperature, as opposed to the usual few-billionths of a degree above absolute zero [colorado.edu].

      The article skimped out on theoretical details, but the Bose-Enstein-type condensate refers to the superconducting phase-transition where the electrons form Cooper-pairs (through an electron-lattice-electron interaction). These Cooper pairs are spin-zero (the electrons pair anti-symetrically into the singlet state), and act like bosons, which can condense into the Bose-Einstein condensate.

      Note that this is NOT exactly like a Bose-Einstein condensate because the bosons themselves contain two fermions, which are effectively coupled. These are similar, but not the same as the rubidium atoms in the BEC experiment you linked to. So it is kind of a BEC, but not exactly.

      Now regarding your mention of a few-billionths of a degree above absolute zero, that is for the rubidium-atom experiment. THe superconducting phase-transition, which is what this article was referring to, happens in many elements at a few Kelvins, and in High-Tc materials up to the record of 150 K (I think).

      Beyond that, there is other stuff that is sketchy, such as the professor retiring and not verifying that the diamond superconductors demonstrate the Meissner Effect (magnetic field expulsion from the interior of a superconductor) and other things. If this was really superconducting, I'd be sure he'd stay on as emeritus for at least a few years and keep going with these experiments, where he has a head-start over all other groups. If this is really room-temp Tc material that the article purports it to be, then this is HUGE news, and he should stay emeritus than quit research entirely. Hmmm...

  • Now, I may be wrong here... but are these the same diamonds that are used as jewelry? How big will they need to be? The diamond ring I bought my wife when I asked her to marry me cost a fortune, many times more than a CPU. (She's worth the expense, of course!).

    I also shudder having to think of the poor guy in Sierra Leone who spent all week mining for the diamond to make enough money to feed his family. What will he see of this?
  • Giving your wife a diamond engagement ring that's actually functional?

    Someone ought to tell this guy [slashdot.org]!
  • When we hear of the horrible things the diamond industry has done to quash human rights, price fix, etc. it's a great reason not to buy a diamond engagement ring.

    But how much will that going to matter when it comes down to clock cycles?

    Someone needs to start coming up with rational explanations for our girlfriends now so we're not caught unprepared.
  • The romance of any particular gift is inversely proportional to the size of the gift multiplied by the usefuless multiplied by the price.

    So, a diamond CPU fails it.

  • But... (Score:3, Funny)

    by JonnyElvis42 ( 609632 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:15PM (#5681443)
    If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

    ...What if I want her to say "Yes"?

  • April first was last week. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <marktNO@SPAMnerdflat.com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:18PM (#5681463) Journal
    Although I commend the PhysicsWeb journal for not being too sensationalistic by choosing to use an interogative form in their article title rather than the more tempting declarative form, this sort of breakthrough at this time simply defies credibilty as far as I'm concerned.

    I'd need to see a lot more evidence than what's in a science journal before I'd be willing to buy it.

  • If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!


    Screw that. With these guys [lifegem.com], you can turn yourself into a CPU! When you die, your children can play Doom VI because of your remains.
  • Yeah, but can you OVERCLOCK it? :)
  • If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!

  • Manufacturing? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DuSTman31 ( 578936 )

    Myself I'd like to know what kind of manufacturing is available to make this possible.

    With silicon semiconductors, a massive crystal of the stuff can be grown by suspending a small crystal "seed" an molten silicon and very slowly pulling the seed upwards while rotating..

    Carbon, on the other hand, isn't so obliging - It doesn't melt, it sublimes directly from a solid state into a gaseous one, so this way's out..

    Using diamond as a basis for microcircuit manufacture can't seriously take off until we ca

    • Re:Manufacturing? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by merlin_jim ( 302773 ) <James DOT McCrac ... ratapult DOT com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:58PM (#5681719)
      One possible method is CVD - Chemical Vapor Deposition. When I was going through High School, for a couple hundred dollars of lab equipment (most of which was usable for other experiments and found in the store room of the chemlab), you could setup a lab to grow a diamond film. Now the diamond film grown there was mostly amorphous carbon, but there were micron-sized diamond crystals embedded in it.

      The process involves flowing a mixture of alcohol (-COOH), Water Vapor, and Hydrogen over a hot (2400 degree Centigrade) tungsten filament, flowing the resulting gas over a warm (900 degree Centigrade) Si or Mb plate in an oxygen free environment. The idea being that when the mix hits the tungsten, the alcohol combines with the Hydrogen to from two water molecules, leaving the carbon as a free radical.

      This was a repeat of an experiment from the 50's. I imagine they've improved the process to the point of being able to reliably grow larger crystals by now. I seem to remember that the heat differential between the filament and the plate was a problem (smaller heat differential = bigger/better crystals at a trade off of time to grow) and that the substrate was also a problem... an existing diamond crystal seed of some sort would provide a much better substrate. An Si substrate, for instance, means that the attatchment points on the surface of the plate for the carbon free radicals doesn't match what you would find in diamond, so adjacent deposition sites can't work together to form the same larger crystal.

    • Re:Manufacturing? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Bender_ ( 179208 )
      Carbon, on the other hand, isn't so obliging - It doesn't melt, it sublimes directly from a solid state into a gaseous one, so this way's out..

      You can grow diamond from the vapor phase. (CVD-Diamond). This does work and is state of the art. There are also some people out there who try to grow diamond from a fluid phase using a precursor/solvent, but results have yet to be shown..

  • Again, this is one of those "it works well in theory" deals. In theory, diamonds are superconductive. This relies heavily upon the symmetry of the crystalline structure. In nature, diamonds have enough imperfections to destroy the superconductive nature. SciAm had an article last summer.

  • Great... (Score:3, Funny)

    by chinton ( 151403 ) <chinton001-slashdot@nospam.gmail.com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @05:43PM (#5681999) Journal
    Does that mean I'm gonna have to pay three months salary for my next CPU?
  • "If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

    And promptly have her kick your nuts in.

  • "If successful, perhaps one day you could give..." (Score:3, Funny)

    by Joey7F ( 307495 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @10:20PM (#5683602) Homepage Journal
    "If successful, perhaps one day you could give your love a diamond engagement CPU instead of a ring!"

    You don't know a whole lot of women do you?

    For marriage that is defintely out, but for engagement purposes, perhaps it could serve as a token ring?

    --Joey

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