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> even compared to the synthetic materials we are now capable of creating

Aren't like almost all commercially used diamonds these days synthetic as well? As far as I can tell, other than just for the sake of them being "natural" or for having weird impurities that add color to them (read as: subjectively better to some people), no one wants/needs natural ones anymore.

I've thought about this at times. How convenient that things seem to work out that way! Though I wonder if it's more just a bias. All the very impressive things you can make from the abundant materials have already been made. Like, say, all of life?

It is a very good thermal conductor, but not the best. At low temperatures, copper is better. At very low temperatures, helium is much better.

Superfluid helium's maximum thermal conductivity is roughly 100x diamond's maximum!

Diamonds are crystals, like silicon Nothing wrong with liking shiny rocks, but they aren't that rare and we can generally produce them. Materials have properties. Understanding the properties generally gives us leverage to use them in our own benefit.

I don't know... LLMs, drones, culture wars, nostalgia for monarchical rule - we're only really missing the replicators and nano-engineering at this point.

Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

I was reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

Make a Point Contact Transistor at home https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmotkjMSKnI

You ever play that really old Zachtronics game where you have to design circuits at the silicon level? (KOHCTPYKTOP: Engineer of the People)

Give me an inverter and single logic gate and I can by myself recreate computing. Give me a silicon wafer and dopants and I no longer know what I am doing. The structure is 3D and also somewhat abstract and I fail to be able to maintain the mental state to understand it.

I don't understand my mental barrier. I get the abstract theory and rough physical concepts, but somehow I can't pull features out of a micrograph like Ken Shirriff can.

DeBeers is already almost dead. Anglo American has been trying to sell it for two years, the latest attempt at around $1B for their 85% share.

Their marketing works just as well to create the diamond market just as well as it does to make synthetic diamonds mean you don't really love her.

Maybe someone can find a way to make transparent diamond.

Lab diamonds are used in huge quantities (ie. By the bucketful ) for making cutting tools like saws and drill bits.

I believe the main difficulty is making large and pure diamonds. Making small low purity diamonds is cheap and easy to scale.

massive crushing pressure is not the only way to create diamond particles.

Because it's their website, not yours?

Normally, I am the first to complain about broken websites, but it looks fine for me on Firefox on a laptop. Scrolling works normal using up-down arrow keys and dragging on the side scrollbar. There is an unnecessary effect with the 3D diagram, but it doesn't interfere with the site. How are you viewing it?

I know; at least very little else breaks on the site if you just kill scripts in ublock origin.

I believe these are hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to the carbon atoms on the surface of the diamond.

The hydrogen is not a gas.

If I'm reading this correctly it's two or threefold. Faster switching times, which both increases max speed and reduces power consumption. Avoids flaws due to silicon doping, presently we add ions to silicon to get P or N type junctions and they've found a way to get P type junctions using "2D Hole Gas" which is basically a thin layer of voids inside the bulk diamond crystal after treatment and avoids a category of flaws that affect silicon yields. Third, and this is speculation, but diamond has a way higher thermal conductivity and lower thermal expansion coefficient, so it can likely withstand higher temps and conduct heat away faster.

> why?

>> 50x faster switching

It's hard to say which applications will benefit the most, but orders of magnitude improvement tend to enable qualitative shifts downstream.

Not to mention, 1000x is just the cost right now while the tech is new.

The higher the voltages it can handle, the faster it can switch efficiently, and the better the thermal performance, the wider its potential applications in power electronics.

Possibly on a par with the other exotic materials currently in use.

The moment it becomes useful its cost will fall down to silicone prices really fast.

Right now you can buy 100g of diamonds for low teens in $ from China. Diamonds are produced in enormous quantities as abrasives. And if you do something on large scale you become better at it.

So far we haven't invested in big monocrystals because there was not much use for them aside from jewelry and probably other small niches. The moment some R&D makes something useful out of them - they will be Jevoned into oblivion.