Word: diamonded
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...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...
...ever since the 1950s, when scientists created the first synthetic diamond bits (they were so tiny that they were more like diamond grit), researchers have been slowly demystifying the diamondmaking process and systematically trying to replicate it. Small bits of diamond--produced in a lab under extremely high pressure and temperature and used in cutting tools, optical equipment and lasers--are easy to generate. This type of production has become so routine that thousands of small plants all over China pour out synthetic diamonds suitable for cutting stone. Gem-quality diamonds of one carat or more, however, are trickier because...
...turns out that as beautiful as a polished diamond is to look at, it also possesses physical and chemical properties that make it an ideal workhorse material for everything from semiconductors to biosensors. "To my mind, it's a case of finding what diamond enables that nothing else can do," says Donald Sadoway, a professor of materials science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Because it conducts heat so well, for example, diamond could be particularly useful for the small-electronics industry, which relies on ever more powerful processors that generate incredible amounts of heat. (Just try working with your laptop...
...this list of potential applications--and their untapped economic potential--that has attracted so much interest. The U.S. Navy and Army are investigating diamond's usefulness both as a next-generation power-grid switch and as a wear-resistant coating for military equipment. Gemesis, a Sarasota, Fla., company that has been selling man-made gemstones for four years, sets aside a chunk of its R&D budget for the electronics industry. Even DeBeers, the dominant producer of mined gemstone diamonds, has acknowledged the la- tent power of synthetic diamonds (the preferred industry term). DeBeers has maintained a small business selling...
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...