Word: apollos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Peer through the small window of one of Apollo Diamond's canister-like reactors, and it might seem as if you're staring at something from out of this world. The inside of the cramped chamber is bathed in a magenta glow more befitting a Los Angeles nightclub than a science lab. Evenly arrayed on a small plate at the center of this colorful haze are what looks like 16 lozenges burning with an even deeper pink...
...unlikely as it seems, each of those small pinkish disks is a diamond, growing from a tiny seed crystal under conditions carefully created and monitored by Apollo's proprietary software. Chemically, Apollo's creations are no different from the diamond that is squeezed from carbon deep in the earth at incredible pressure and temperature. "It still blows people's minds that you can manufacture diamond," says Bryant Linares, president and CEO of the 17-year-old company based in suburban Boston. "People still feel that there is something mystical about diamonds and how they are made...
Still, creating a diamond semiconductor is no easy feat. Rather than trying to mimic the conditions under which diamond is generated deep in the earth, Apollo, Element Six and most of the other leading diamondmakers are relying on a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD). It's a low-pressure, high-temperature method that uses heat energy from plasma and a combination of gases to rain carbon atoms on a starter seed of the gem, which gradually grows into a larger single-crystal diamond. CVD produces a more uniform, consistent diamond in sizes large enough to make an effective transistor...
...Apollo and its competitors are close to perfecting the manufacturing process, but it's unlikely that man-made diamond will replace silicon entirely. Diamond manufacturing remains expensive, even after several spikes in silicon-wafer prices over the past year. But semiconductor researchers remain optimistic about diamond's future role; at the very least, a combination of silicon and diamond could produce more powerful devices that run at cooler temperatures. Says Mike Mayberry, director of components research at Intel: "We're still interested enough to keep...
Since it may be another decade before such medical applications of diamond become a reality, for now Apollo is using the same CVD process to produce gem-quality stones for the retail market. Just last year the company started selling rough-cut gems to a Boston jewelry retailer. It may prove to be a smart strategy until the industrial market matures; thanks to booming economies in China and India, retail sales of diamond jewelry have been surging for a decade. Analysts expect up to 20% annual growth in the diamond market in China alone. With current mine capacities, that translates...