Diamonds could replace the silicon in your smartphone

Startup company Akhan Semiconductor plans to make processing chips out of diamonds for smartphones, smartwatches, and laptops, ultimately bettering modern tech’s usual environmental impact. Diamonds are highly capable of transferring heat and can retain energy much more efficiently than today’s silicon. Its minerals can approximately run five times hotter and eliminate up to 90% of energy usually lost in an electron transfer.

Reducing devices’ temperatures would be a key advantage of incorporating diamonds into smart devices’ hardware. A diamond-based smartphone remains cool for longer periods of use, while also increasing device lifespan, considering that heat wears away at electronics. Diamond ultimately cools more easily (with 22 times the heat transfer efficiency of silicon) and can endure higher voltages before breaking down. Its thermal conductivity also makes it an ideal heat sink, which attaches to a microprocessor chip and prevents it from overheating by absorbing heat and dissipating it into the air.  As a result, this cooling system allows phones to forgo the temperature-regulating heat sinks and fans of silicon models, resulting in thinner devices. Less heat impact could also make the phone’s performance much faster. Akhan’s chief of operations, Carl Shurbof, even hints that diamond-based electronics could be cheaper than silicon versions, all because keeping devices cool would not be relevant.

The concept began in 2007 when Akhan’s founder and chief executive, Adam Khan, considered commercializing diamond-based electronics. At the time, two obstacles to achieving mass diamond production were deposition (the process of growing a layer of diamond on top of a base) and doping (fine-tuning diamond’s electrical properties). Eventually, Akhan partnered up with scientists in the U.S. Department of Energy, obtaining access to exclusive methodsfor creating synthetic diamonds. Khan had made an earlier discovery of diamonds that stuck securely to conductive metals, and now used Department resources to secure metals and alloys to diamond wafers without affecting the materials’ conductivity. This led towards the company reaching the realization that semiconductors made of diamonds could function and be an incredible asset.

These diamonds are not exactly the type you’d see flashing on somebody’s ring. They are man-made and manufactured with methane plasma; the company heats a reactor filled with hydrogen, argon, and methane to produce them. The methane eventually reaches a plasma state, resulting in thin sheets of diamond material.

Manufacturing and aerospace firms require strong materials capable of withstanding extreme radiation, so these sturdy diamonds could even have a place beyond smart devices. However, bendable and translucent diamond devices seem to be in higher demand at the moment. Akhan is working on flexible diamond semiconductors that can bend a full 45-degree in any direction. “People who bought smartwatches and are interested in styling don’t like how bulky and ugly they are, and so they don’t wear them,” said Shurboff. “We can create a wearable technology that can be transposed to anything you want, is completely flexible, and can easily wrap around your wrist.”

Akhan claims that its semiconductors require 20% less water to produce than silicon semiconductors do and that devices not needing heat regulators will cut down on about 85-90% of thermal materials that end up in landfills. While one of its facilities began shipping chips in early 2016, it is not expected for Akhan to contribute to the global semiconductor market for quite some time.

Source: Digital Trends, WhatIs.com, Akhan Semiconductor