Timeline for If natural diamond was large and abundant how would it change the world?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 23, 2017 at 3:01 | comment | added | Catalyst | @jamesqf: while silicon is mainly at 300 mm diameter wafers, diamond isn't there, nor does it need to be. For many viable markets (e.g. high power semiconductors), smaller wafers would be snapped up! Seriously, I'd love to be in a position to offer even a few 50 mm diam. or even 25 mm diamond wafers for sale! Cleaving has worked quite well on the largest cut diamonds documented. I'm not certain thin diamond layers are easy to cleave, but the cleavage planes of diamond are just about ideal, cartesian axes. (It's just that trying it has been too expensive, I suppose.) | |
| Jan 23, 2017 at 2:54 | comment | added | jamesqf | @AlexP: I really, really doubt that you are going to manage to reliably get slices 300 mm in diameter and less than 1 mm thick (the size of wafer used in Intel's current CPUs) by cleavage. It then has to be polished to extreme smoothness. The wafer has to be free of crystal defects, which is unlikely to happen with a naturally-occuring crystal. Even the small diamonds we use for jewelery usually have flaws that are visible under low magnification, if not with the unaided eye. | |
| Jan 23, 2017 at 1:26 | comment | added | feetwet | "This is just scratching the surface." Heh – I see what you did there ;) | |
| Jan 22, 2017 at 23:42 | comment | added | AlexP | @jamesqf: "What the heck would you use to cut them into thin slices" -- not cut, but cleave by applying a short, sharp shock. | |
| Jan 22, 2017 at 21:27 | comment | added | jamesqf | Semiconductors are made by depositing various substances on very thin slices of ultra-pure silicon. Even supposing that you could find large natural diamonds of the needed purity, what the heck would you use to cut them into thin slices? | |
| Jan 22, 2017 at 21:11 | comment | added | Catalyst | @Brythan, diamond has a cubic crystal structure and it cleaves easily. If there are nice big (inch or larger) diamonds for cheap, those can be cleaved into flat pieces, especially thin flat pieces, pretty much what's needed for IC fabrication. If the crystals are even bigger, so much the better! | |
| Jan 22, 2017 at 19:40 | comment | added | Brythan | Silicon semiconductors are shaped in manufacture. Presumably synthetic diamond semiconductors are also shaped during manufacture. Natural diamonds would be unlikely to have the exact structure that they need. High quality is possible, but not with the desired pathways. | |
| Jan 22, 2017 at 19:13 | comment | added | Catalyst | @feetwet, since this is a diamond deposit unlike any known in earthly geology (unless DeBeers is really good at keeping secrets!), we can only speculate on the crystal quality. #1 needs low, low defects, whereas bearings and heat xfer aren't quite so fussy. | |
| Jan 22, 2017 at 19:07 | comment | added | feetwet | Are applications #1 and #3 possible using natural diamonds? I'm familiar with synthetic diamond and diamond-like coatings for these characteristics, but it's unclear to me whether natural diamond crystals could be effectively used for these purposes. | |
| Jan 22, 2017 at 18:41 | history | answered | Catalyst | CC BY-SA 3.0 |