Diamond Semi-Conductor @ 81Ghz

M

Moker

The Poker++
Veteran X
woah111


http://www.eetimes.com/at/hpm/news/OEG20030822S0005


TOKYO — Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) has developed a diamond semiconductor device that operates at 81 GHz frequency, more than twice the speed of earlier devices. The advance promises to make amplification in the millimeter-wave band from 30 to 300 GHz possible for the first time, NTT claimed.
Diamond is expected to be the next generation semiconductor material because of its high thermal conductivity, high breakdown voltage and high carrier mobility. Together, these characteristics makes diamond semiconductors most suitable for high frequency, high power devices.

But diamond semiconductors are prone to defects and impurities that have hindered development of prototype devices with performance close to the expected, theoretical performance of diamond semiconductor devices.

NTT Basic Research Laboratory said it developed a diamond semiconductor thin-film layer in April 2002 that overcomes some of these problems. NTT researchers found that crystal defects, carbon graphite and impurities hurt performance. They eliminated crystal defects and graphite and reduced impurities to 1/20th of previous materials using a high purity gas to grow the diamond layer at lower temperatures of 650-750 degrees C.

The resulting diamond layer showed a carrier mobility at 1300 cm2/Vs, about 20 times higher when compared to previous prototypes, NTT said.

The NTT lab has been in collaboration with the University of Ulm in Germany, which had already succeeded in fabricating FET devices, to develop a diamond semiconductor device using its diamond thin-film layer.

The joint team formed T-shaped gates on the diamond layer, which is on a 3-mm2 diamond substrate. The gate width, which determines the performance of devices, is 0.2 micron. The device operated continuously at 81 GHz. Once the peripherals technology is established, NTT researchers said they expect to boost the output power of the device as high as 30 W/mm, the level required for practical use.

NTT is now working to further decrease impurities to improve the quality of diamond crystal. It is targeting devices with an operating frequency of 200 GHz and an output power of 30 W/mm.

The diamond devices are expected to be in demand to replace with the vacuum tubes that are used in the high frequency, high-power applications such as receivers and transmitters at digital TV broadcasting stations.
 
Thats cool, but what effect will it have on my daily life, for now anyway?

I can imagine a fucking diamond CPU in 20 years costing outrageous cash, but running at 200GHz... that'd be fucking sweet for an ego boost.
 
heh
i always wondered if i had a sig, but had them turned off, if my sig would still show.

guess that answers taht :p
 
with that many gigahertz someone will finally be able to play t2 with settings cranked and still get playable frames
 
OFN for those of you who missed it go here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html

from sept wired news:

The New Diamond Age


Armed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel.
Next up: the computing industry.

By Joshua Davis

Aron Weingarten brings the yellow diamond up to the stainless steel jeweler's loupe he holds against his eye. We are in Antwerp, Belgium, in Weingarten's marbled and gilded living room on the edge of the city's gem district, the center of the diamond universe. Nearly 80 percent of the world's rough and polished diamonds move through the hands of Belgian gem traders like Weingarten, a dealer who wears the thick beard and black suit of the Hasidim.


David Clugston
Yellow diamonds manufactured by Gemesis, the first company to market gem-quality synthetic stones. The largest grow to 3 carats.


"This is very rare stone," he says, almost to himself, in thickly accented English. "Yellow diamonds of this color are very hard to find. It is probably worth 10, maybe 15 thousand dollars."

"I have two more exactly like it in my pocket," I tell him.

He puts the diamond down and looks at me seriously for the first time. I place the other two stones on the table. They are all the same color and size. To find three nearly identical yellow diamonds is like flipping a coin 10,000 times and never seeing tails.

"These are cubic zirconium?" Weingarten says without much hope.

"No, they're real," I tell him. "But they were made by a machine in Florida for less than a hundred dollars."


Ian White
A microwave plasma tool at the Naval Research Lab, used to create diamonds for high-temperature semiconductor experiments.
Weingarten shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at the glittering gems on his dining room table. "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry."

Put pure carbon under enough heat and pressure - say, 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and 50,000 atmospheres - and it will crystallize into the hardest material known. Those were the conditions that first forged diamonds deep in Earth's mantle 3.3 billion years ago. Replicating that environment in a lab isn't easy, but that hasn't kept dreamers from trying. Since the mid-19th century, dozens of these modern alchemists have been injured in accidents and explosions while attempting to manufacture diamonds.

Recent decades have seen some modest successes. Starting in the 1950s, engineers managed to produce tiny crystals for industrial purposes - to coat saws, drill bits, and grinding wheels. But this summer, the first wave of gem-quality manufactured diamonds began to hit the market. They are grown in a warehouse in Florida by a roomful of Russian-designed machines spitting out 3-carat roughs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A second company, in Boston, has perfected a completely different process for making near-flawless diamonds and plans to begin marketing them by year's end. This sudden arrival of mass-produced gems threatens to alter the public's perception of diamonds - and to transform the $7 billion industry. More intriguing, it opens the door to the development of diamond-based semiconductors.

Diamond, it turns out, is a geek's best friend. Not only is it the hardest substance known, it also has the highest thermal conductivity - tremendous heat can pass through it without causing damage. Today's speedy microprocessors run hot - at upwards of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, they can't go much faster without failing. Diamond microchips, on the other hand, could handle much higher temperatures, allowing them to run at speeds that would liquefy ordinary silicon. But manufacturers have been loath even to consider using the precious material, because it has never been possible to produce large diamond wafers affordably. With the arrival of Gemesis, the Florida-based company, and Apollo Diamond, in Boston, that is changing. Both startups plan to use the diamond jewelry business to finance their attempt to reshape the semiconducting world.

read the rest at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html
 
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