Word: semiconductor
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...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...
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...
...PlayStation 3, the fully loaded game machine that debuted in the North American market last week. "We've put a young guy in charge of the technology group to develop core software and media technologies, which we have not been good at," Stringer told TIME. Likewise, the components and semiconductor divisions have a new boss. And a global product-safety officer will make sure a battery fiasco doesn't recur. Out of this crisis, Stringer promised, "we're going to come out stronger and better organized...
...fully loaded game machine that debuts in the North American market Nov. 17. "We've put a young guy in charge of the technology group to develop core software and media technologies, which we have not been good at," Stringer told TIME last week. Likewise, the components and semiconductor divisions have a new boss. And a global product-safety officer will make sure a battery fiasco doesn't recur. Out of this crisis, Stringer promised, "we're going to come out stronger and better organized...