5 ms·
This 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
by mitthrowaway2 2y ago
This 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.
- shiroiushi 2y agoLaser eye surgery won't do that, but intraocular lens implantation could. I think those lenses still don't work that great for reading, but I imagine they will eventually.
- gosub100 2y agoA lot of people regret LASIK. Dry eyes and diminished night vision are the top complaints.
- parineum 2y agoI know of these as side effects but I don't know if they are ubiquitous and people prefer them to glasses or of they don't happen to everyone. Do you happen to know amd know about what the rate of regret is?
- gosub100 2y agoI don't have the data. I think it depends on the severity of the correction. Also, age factors in, if you get it too young your eyes can go blurry again by middle age.
- mathgeek 2y agoYou probably don’t want more conductive lenses, though.
- _ph_ 2y agoI am pretty sure, diamonds would make awful eyeglasses. While their index of refraction is high, which makes glasses thin, their chromatic dispersion is high. That is the very thing which makes their glitter so colorful. For good optical systems you want to try to reduce the dispersion, to 0, if possible. Another story is the scratch-resistance. For that it would be sufficient to coat the surface of the lens with a thin layer of diamond. Which is done in several applications.
- amelius 2y agoMaybe we can have diamond-based scratch protection on smartphones?
- callalex 2y agoI wonder if the process would be cheaper than the current high end (smart)watch and lens practice of sapphire coating?
- namibj 2y agoNo, it's substantially more expensive. At least for anything too large to just cut out of HPHT chunks, just due to CVD at optical grade being pretty slow.
- Animats 2y agoDiamond coated glass is available and is sometimes used for checkout lane scanners.[1] It's not common. [1] https://www.diamonex.com/wear-resistant-glass/ https://www.diamonex.com/wear-resistant-glass/
- opan 2y agoDon't we already have good scratch protection? Cracks from drops seem like the main issue.
- perth 2y ago
- cainxinth 2y agoSounds like something from Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age.
- divbzero 2y agoHow about diamond smartphone screens? Beats Gorilla Glass or sapphire.
- Lucasoato 2y agoLuxottica is top tier.
- ykonstant 2y agoTop tier monopolist that needs to be broken up, preferably with a sledgehammer.
- 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?