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That's a good article. The whole history is there. The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a
by Animats 2y ago
That's a good article. The whole history is there.
The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a high-pressure, high temperature six sided press for about US$200,000. A chemical vapor deposition machine is about the same price.
De Beers, the diamond cartel, has an R&D operation, Element Six. They sell synthetic diamonds for lasers and other exotic applications. The technology is good enough to achieve flaw levels in the parts per billion range, and to make diamond windows for lasers 10cm across.[1]
This is way above jewelry grade.
Over on the natural diamond side, there's been a breakthrough. The industry used to break up some large diamonds during rock crushing. Now there's a industrial X-ray system which is used to examine rocks before crushing to find diamonds. It's working quite well. A 2500 carat diamond was found recently.[1][2] TOMRA, which makes high-volume sorters for everything from recyclables to rice, has a sorter for this job. This is working so well that there's now something of a glut of giant diamonds too big for jewelry.
The finishing processes of cutting and polishing have been automated. The machinery for that comes mostly from China and India.
Diamonds are now something you can buy by the kilo, in plastic bags.
[1] https://e6-prd-cdn-01.azureedge.net/mediacontainer/medialibraries/element6/documents/brochures/diamond-handbook_en.pdf?ext=.pdf https://e6-prd-cdn-01.azureedge.net/mediacontainer/medialibr...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/amandakooser/2024/08/23/monster-2492-carat-diamond-found-using-x-ray-technology/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/amandakooser/2024/08/23/monster...
[3] https://ikcabstracts.com/index.php/ikc/article/download/4101/4101/4087 https://ikcabstracts.com/index.php/ikc/article/download/4101...
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoThis is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!
- Raydovsky 2y agoNo deeper groves at 8?
- biomcgary 2y agoDiamond eyeglasses? The lenses would still be cheaper than the Luxottica frames.
- passwordoops 2y agoLike Luxottica wouldn't immediately roll up the diamond lens company...
- Balgair 2y agoI know this is a bit of a throwaway comment, but I'd never thought of diamonds for eyeglasses. And, honestly, that would be really really cool. Yeah, there are other materials with better refractive indices and that are tougher and cheaper and dont shatter. Sure. But if we can get diamonds down to something that could be made into lenses for the (very high end) retail market, man, that would just be so cool!
- LtdJorge 2y agoI'd rather use the diamonds to manufacture the laser machines that do eye surgery and remove glasses lol
- shiroiushi 2y agoNo, because eye surgery can't take the place of corrective lenses in all cases: it's not a full replacement for glasses or contacts. For people the farther ends of the spectrum (either needing very light correction, or extremely heavy), surgery doesn't work, or for very high prescriptions it only helps but it's not enough by itself. (Ophthalmologists please feel free to chime in.) And there's other reasons people aren't eligible for surgery, such as being too young.
- kazinator 2y agoLaser eye surgery cannot fix the problem of the lens having become inflexible and losing its focusing range. In such a case, surgery can only change where the focal distance lies.
- nsteel 2y agoWhy are they not more popular as a material for heatsinks? Especially with those that like decorating the inside of the PC with fairy lights.
- bitmasher9 2y agoIt’s still prohibitively expensive for such applications.
- namibj 2y agoOh they are. But heat pipes/vapor chambers have them beat. So they are only used where electrical insulation (pure diamond sheet) or mechanical strength (cheap diamond grains sorted into a densely packed single layer of diamonds embedded into a copper matrix; this fits nicely for silver sinter bonding dies to due to the low thermal expansion of diamond) is needed from the heatsink.
- nsteel 2y agoThanks. I since found https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/S2666-3864(23)00517-9 https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/..., perhaps it makes sense where you don't have a lot of space.
- namibj 2y agoOh, nice; I was thinking of what I believe is this, though: https://sumitomoelectric.com/products/cu-diamond https://sumitomoelectric.com/products/cu-diamond : size-selected diamonds to match the thickness profile of the power module/brick base plate, then encased in copper. Benefit is arguably more the expansion matching to GaN/SiC than the thermal conductivity improvements over plain copper.
- jaggederest 2y agoRiffing on this, the amazing thing about diamond is not merely that it's a better conductor of heat, but that it's about 2.5 times higher than copper. The only thing that beats it is single crystal boron arsenide which has some obvious downsides, being of course much more expensive and involving arsenic, which is considered a bad thing. And with that, diamond is destined to be even cheaper than silicon, I think. Much more available and easier to purify, the hard part is rendering it into a crystal which is relatively solved.
- thfuran 2y agoI just want a diamond heat sink. And a diamond kitchen knife.
- Animats 2y agoDiamond heat spreaders for ICs are available.[1] There are problems with coupling the heat to the diamond, and with the various materials having different rates of expansion. It hasn't really caught on. Diamond layers within ICs to help get the heat out are being considered for future GPUs.[2] Again, it's not a magic bullet. [1] https://www.diamond-materials.com/en/products/thermal-management/heat-spreaders/ https://www.diamond-materials.com/en/products/thermal-manage... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666386423005179 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266638642...
- chii 2y ago> And a diamond kitchen knife. Which shatters on contact with a small bone.
- gpm 2y agoI believe that issue is solved with polycrystalline diamond.
- adrian_b 2y agoIn my opinion, the right way of cooking is to always start by removing all bones with a specialized knife, i.e. a boning knife or a filleting knife. The meat without bones and also most vegetables can be handled by the currently existing ceramic kitchen knives and they could be handled by a diamond knife (though diamond, even in polycrystalline form, is much less tough than zirconia ceramic or silicon nitride ceramic, which are better suited for kitchen knives).
- adrian_b 2y agoZirconia kitchen knives are very hard and they are less fragile than diamond. They have the advantage of keeping a sharp edge for a much longer time than steel blades, but they cannot be sharpened again with simple tools and for some purposes it may be inconvenient that the zirconia blades cannot be made as thin as the best steel blades, due to the risk of breakage, and there are also less choices of blade forms, e.g. there are no bird's beak zirconia blades, which is the best shape for peeling and paring vegetables. High-quality zirconia kitchen knives, like those made by Kyocera, are very pleasant to work with. Diamond blades could not feel much different, even if they should remain sharp for a longer time, but with a higher risk of breakage when mishandled.
- hhh 2y agoDiamond heat sinks inc?
- hammock 2y agoIncredible, great info. We are now living in the Diamond Age.
- db48x 2y agoWell, not quite. They were making diamond windows from atmospheric carbon dioxide at room temperature in household machines or machines you could rent at the post office. We’re a ways off from that yet.
- Terr_ 2y agoAlso the whole aerostat thing where you make a diamond "balloon" full of vacuum that floats in air, using the strength of the rigid diamond to avoid it being crushed and popped. I'm no materials-scientist, but I did some napkin-math on that once and it came out to some ridiculously-thin-sounding layer of diamond.
- jayd16 2y agoso I guess it needs to be like 1/4th the thickness of the latex in a balloon (diamond is 4x the density). Vacuum gives you a bit more lift than helium but not that much. Yeah, seems pretty thin.
- db48x 2y agoYea, a bit of artistic license on the author’s part. You could make things quite light though.
- _yb2s 2y agoThe pressure across a latex balloon is only about 0.5% that of maintaining a vacuum in earths atmosphere. I’m guessing the diamond would need to be much more than 1/4 the thickness of a latex balloon.
- HPsquared 2y agoBuckling would be a problem.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- agumonkey 2y agoHow will they maintain their jewelry business ? It feels like Sony CD-R drives in the Playstation era.
- nimish 2y agoThe same way vinyl still sells.
- taneq 2y agoBetter to move into a new related business than to Kodak yourself.
- karunamurti 2y agoDo it like here in Japan. They charged you 3x-4x the gold price and said "Oh it's not the gold price, but the craftsmanship".
- wkat4242 2y agoMaybe they'll just stop caring about it because they have a much better new business. The same way rolls royce no longer sells luxury cars to stuffy British aristocracy but makes a mint building huge jet engines.
- mr_toad 2y agoOn an unrelated note, Rolls Royce is probably more synonymous with Rap artists than British aristocracy these days.
- Nursie 2y agoWhile that is a nice idea... RR cars has been a BMW subsidiary for 21 years, having been separated out from the aircraft engine manufacturing business in the 1970s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motor_Cars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motor_Cars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Holdings (unless that's exactly what you meant of course, Rolls Royce Holdings indeed no longer makes the cars... )
- 2y ago
- trhway 2y ago>diamond windows for lasers 10cm across sounds like may be soon we'll see diamond wafers for the chips (especially as the price of processed wafer from a fab increases, the cost of the source wafer itself is becoming less important) Add to that X-ray lithography, and the Moore's Law will continue for quite a while.
- samplatt 2y agoAnd at 8x the thermal conductivity of copper, we might see some diamond HSF's as well.
- namibj 2y agoAFAIK you can still only buy diamond diodes outside of secret military stuff, and even those are not at all accessible. Sadly GaN suffers from horrible p-channels (they use resistor/nmos logic as the non-differential logic family for GaN ICs), and SiC from kinda sorta delaminating gate oxide (JFETs are fine though, and vertical ones are very nicely behaved, including a lot of resilience like avalanche resistance (though actual (non-capacitive) current flow through the gate junction has to be limited to prevent damage)). N-type diamond is just difficult, along with diamond itself at a purity approximating "intrinsic"/"none" levels of doping. The issue is that you have to continually etch graphitic carbon during the CVD process, requiring aggressive chemistry.
- regularfry 2y agoImpure diamonds for semiconductors were a plot device in Michael Crichton's Congo. I never knew if there was much basis to it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- userbinator 2y agoThe machinery for that comes mostly from China and India. It's worth noting that the Chinese word for diamond is literally "drill stone", which highlights its application as an abrasive more than jewelry.
- newZWhoDis 2y agoI just want solid diamond cookware. Wouldn’t a diamond skillet be incredibly non-stick, easy to clean, and totally non toxic?
- IG_Semmelweiss 2y agoI am actually.surprised you arent getting any responses With the current focus on PFOS and just amount of garbage materiel used to prepare our foods, I think some innovation is just around the corner.
- semi-extrinsic 2y ago> some innovation is just around the corner It's already here! Stainless steel for pots, carbon steel for pans. Once I got my first carbon steel pan (not cast iron) I knew it was game over for the teflon pans in my house. I'm now gradually replacing the teflon pans with carbon steel, and then I'll never have to replace another pan in my lifetime. The upcoming PFAS ban in Europe will probably accelerate this transition greatly, unless DuPont et al have too much influence over politicians...
- alex_duf 2y agoI replaced my téflon pans with carbon steel. I find the transition and learning curve to be much more difficult than téflon. Cooking an egg is a big no-no, I need to think about when to squeeze a lemon or when to put my tomato sauce otherwise I might damage the seasoning. Nothing blocking but definitely a lot of things I don't want to think about.
- adrian_b 2y agoThe fastest and the easiest way to cook eggs is in a closed glass vessel in a microwave oven. The power and time must be selected carefully, to avoid explosions, but once the right combination is determined it will always be perfectly reproducible. I prefer to separate the egg whites and the yolks before cooking (and mix them with different ingredients, possibly whipping the egg whites first), but making fried eggs or scrambled eggs is as easy. The eggs can be cooked alone and mixed later with other ingredients, or they can be mixed with other ingredients before putting them in the oven.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- xeonmc 2y agoRe: source #2, I believe this is a better reference: https://old.reddit.com/comments/1f06cpm https://old.reddit.com/comments/1f06cpm
- Xcelerate 2y ago> diamond windows for lasers 10cm across > Diamonds are now something you can buy by the kilo, in plastic bags. I can’t wait to use diamond cookware. A pan with a thin layer of 430 stainless steel for induction, a wafer of diamond, and then another thin layer of stainless on top will be amazing. Almost perfect evenness over any cooktop.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoAren't diamonds fairly brittle? I'd be worried about such a cooking pan snapping in half as I flip an omelette.
- dragontamer 2y agoThat's what the steel is for. Steel for induction and strength. Diamond (like copper cores) for heat traversal.
- chronogram 2y ago> Thermal conductivity of natural diamond was measured to be about 2,200 W/(m·K), which is five times more than silver, the most thermally conductive metal. Monocrystalline synthetic diamond enriched to 99.9% the isotope 12C had the highest thermal conductivity of any known solid at room temperature: 3,320 W/(m·K), though reports exist of superior thermal conductivity in both carbon nanotubes and graphene. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_properties_of_diamond#Thermal_conductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_properties_of_diamond... I had no idea it was that good. I wonder why they don't make them that way then, as expensive cookware already seems to be a high margin business.
- amluto 2y agoI’m not sure how hot one would need to get one’s pan to have potential problems, but diamond is carbon, and carbon is soluble in hot steel. The mismatched coefficient of thermal expansion could also be a problem.
- TheRealPomax 2y agoThis is what oil-core cookware already does. But there's only so much "heat spreading" you can do before faster conductivity does basically nothing. The thermal conductivity of steel itself becomes the limiting factor pretty quickly. That said, if they can figure out vapor depositing diamond onto stainless steel, I'd take a diamond surface over an enamel surface. Provided they can figure out how to make it perfectly flat rather than so jagged at the molecular level that literally everything sticks to it. ("wouldn't that burn? It's just carbon after all": only if you give it the cast iron pan treatment and manage to have it sit on so much gas for so long that you get it up to 700C, which would make no sense)
- the8472 2y ago> a glut of giant diamonds too big for jewelry Time to commoditize crowns.