Slicing Diamond Into Usable Semiconductor Wafers With Frickin’ Laser Beams

You Have To Crack It Simply Proper

Diamond based mostly semiconductors definitely sound attention-grabbing however are extremely tough to make due to the hardness of diamond.  That hardness poses a problem for anybody who desires to utilize diamond, it tends to separate alongside particular traces when labored and people traces usually tend to destroy the wafer than to interrupt the place wanted.  To get round this corporations have made synthetic diamonds to work with, however as you’d anticipate the fee is kind of prohibitive!   A workforce on the Chiba College College of Engineering have provide you with an attention-grabbing resolution, which is to make use of lasers to persuade pure diamonds to separate the place they need it to and never the place the diamond would break up if left to it’s personal units.

Other than sounding cool, there’s a profit to be gained from switching from silicon to diamond.  Carbon presents a far better bandgap than does silicon, which implies it runs much more effectively at larger voltages, frequencies, and temperatures than magic sand.  That effectivity interprets into much less waste warmth and decrease electrical consumption, each of which have gotten a problem with present chip supplies.  That profit extends past the pc you’re studying this on, it might make primary electronics much more environment friendly and would have fairly a number of functions within the automotive trade.

The Register offers numerous links to the research behind diamond semiconductors if you are interested.