Friday, April 9, 2010

MORE GREENER ELECTRONICS WITH DIAMOND CHIPS

The economics of the electronics industry is mainly based upon its capability to manufacture thousands of microchips simultaneously from silicon wafers the size of dinner plates.If we could make those wafers from a material that is far superior, and incomparably more glamorous:diamond,then a new generation of greener, more powerful electronics could be evolved.As we know,pure diamond is a super-tough electrical insulator, but given the right impurities it becomes a semiconductor.Also it is the best thermal conductor on Earth. Those properties means synthetic diamond could be used to make microchips that handle high-power signals but do not require power-hungry cooling systems.
Sowing Sparklers
Obviously, making diamond wafers big enough for economic mass production has been a difficult process.. Synthetic diamond is made using a process called Chemical Vapor Deposition(CVD), in which a plasma of methane or other hydrocarbon gas deposits carbon onto a surface "seeded" with diamond particles. When the wafer has been grown, it is etched off the seed layer. But until now, the largest diamond wafers made like this have been around a centimetre square and a couple of millimetres thick.To grow them further, the AIST team first tried using CVD to bond several smaller wafers together.

It certainly has sufficient potential for fabricating electronic devices.

2 comments:

  1. cultured diamondsMay 6, 2010 at 3:24 PM

    As far as I know, high pressure high temperature technology used for diamond growing could create diamonds of 2 and more carats in size. It's a bit large than CVD technology can produce. This HPHT technology is used by Gemesis, Chatham, New Age Diamonds companies. Some diamonds are used for jewelry but the greater part of them goes for industrial needs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh thanks for this great information friend.. Keep reading new posts..

    ReplyDelete

Enter your Comments & suggestion here.. no need for signing up..