Comment by ktm5j
17 hours ago
I think the better question is: what real world applications need these qualities enough to justify the cost? They mention cooling application, I don't buy that anyone is that interested in reducing hotspots in their chips even if it makes them last longer.
For high-voltage applications (like power supplies) or high-power high-frequency applications (like radio transmitters) or high temperature applications (e.g. inside ovens or engines) silicon transistors are already in the process of being completely replaced by silicon carbide or gallium nitride transistors.
Despite the fact that those are much more expensive than silicon transistors, they are so much better that their use saves money in other parts of the system in which they are used.
Diamond transistors could be even better than SiC and GaN transistors, but there are many difficult technological problems that must be solved until being able to make commercial products.
The linked page reports some significant advances, which avoid a source of problems in the past, which were caused by the poor behavior of dopant impurities inside diamond crystals.
Space. They are more resilient to radiation, faster, don't generate as much heat and are more tolerant of heat. That pretty much tells you where they're going to be used.
I had a family friend working on diamond semiconductors in the 90s. The application at that time was for sensors located in the hot section of a jet engine.
> the cost?
What cost? The lab cost today, or the cost after we figure out how to make thousands a day in a diamond wafer fab?
If this were to become practical, operating high speed circuits in space might become a great deal easier due to higher temperature differential. High frequency RF in space is valuable enough that this application is certainly a candidate for such devices, even at costs far greater than Si/SiC/GaN.