Recently the New York Times reported the following:
Why Diamonds Are a Computer Chip’s New Best Friend (1/2)
Data centers squander vast amounts of electricity, most
of it as heat. The physical properties of diamond offer a potential solution,
researchers say.
The NYT - By Amos Zeeberg
Oct. 8, 2025
With tech companies racing to build more data centers
housing servers that run the latest A.I. models, the amount of electricity
these facilities consume is skyrocketing. But most of that electricity doesn’t
power computing at all. It is squandered in the crudest way: as heat, spilling
out of every one of the hundreds of billions of transistors in a modern chip.
This heat is a great waste of energy that significantly shortens a chip’s life and makes it run less efficiently, generating still more wasteful heat. Consequently, one of the critical tasks in data centers is keeping the temperature of servers down so they can run smoothly.
Mr. Roscheisen is one of many engineers developing ways to embed tiny pieces of synthetic diamond, of all things, into chips to keep them cool. Diamond, in addition to being the hardest known material, is also exceptionally good at moving heat from place to place.
The high thermal conductivity of diamond arises from the same property that makes it so hard: Each carbon atom is bonded strongly to four neighbors, with no weak link in any direction. Those strong bonds are efficient at carrying the vibrations that move heat through a crystal.
“High-end electronics can already be bought that use diamond heat-spreaders,” Dr. May said. “Within a few years, even the processor in your home PC or mobile phone will probably be attached to a diamond heat-spreader.”
In recent years, Mr. Roscheisen’s company has been exploring how to make a thin layer of heat-dissipating diamond and attach it to the back of the silicon wafers on which chips are built. One selling point of this approach is that its thin diamond layers are made of single crystals, which are better at dissipating heat than arrays of crystals are. But such thin layers are harder to make, and consequently more expensive.
The company manufactures diamonds by making a very hot gas, or plasma, rich in carbon and coaxing it to deposit carbon atoms in precisely the right configuration. A key step, according to the company, is tricking each diamond to begin crystallizing as though it were growing atop a layer of existing, perfectly ordered diamond.
This effectively shows the new carbon atoms how to fit together. Proceeding without that instruction, the company’s website states, “is like multiple people trying to tile a floor from different ends of a room without using a template: They would meet somewhere in the middle without fitting” into a single, unified crystal.
(to be continued)
Translation
為什麼鑽石是電腦晶片新的寵兒（1/2）
數據中心浪費了大量電力，其中大部分以熱量的形式釋放。研究人員表示，鑽石的物理特性提供了一個潛在的解決方案。
隨著科技公司競相建造更多數據中心用於收容運行最新人工智能模型的伺服器，這些設施的耗電量正在飆升。但這些電力大部分根本沒有用來運算。它們以最原始的方式浪費：以熱量的形式，從現代晶片中數千億個電晶體中散發出來。
南舊金山一家專門生產電子產品用的鑽石製造公司 - Diamond Foundry的電氣工程師兼企業家R. Martin Roscheisen說道: 「晶片中一個不光彩的秘密是，超過一半的能量在晶體管層面以漏電流的形式被浪廢了」。
這些熱量會大大浪費能源，顯著縮短晶片壽命，降低晶片運作效率，並產生出更多浪費的熱能。因此，數據中心的關鍵任務之一就是降低伺服器的溫度，以確保其平穩運作。
Roscheisen先生是眾多工程師之一，正在開發將微小的人造鑽石嵌入晶片, 令人驚訝地, 以保持晶片冷卻的方法。鑽石不僅是已知最堅硬的材料，而且還非常善於將熱量從一個地方轉移到另一個地方。
英國布里斯託大學的物理化學家Paul May說:「大多數人沒有意識到，鑽石的導熱性能是所有材料中最好的」。他又補充說，鑽石的導熱速度是銅的數倍，而銅是晶片散熱器中常用的材料。
鑽石的高導熱性源自於其堅硬的特性：每個碳原子都與四個相鄰的碳原子牢固地鍵合，在任何方向上都沒有薄弱環節。這些牢固的鍵能夠有效地傳遞熱量在晶體中移動的振動。
May博士說: 「現在高端電子產品已經可以買到使用鑽石散熱器了」; 「幾年之內，就連家用電腦或手機的處理器也很可能連接到鑽石散熱器上」。
近年來，Roscheisen先生的公司一直在探索如何製造一層薄薄的散熱鑽石，並將其附著在建造晶片的矽晶圓背面。這種方法的一大賣點是，其薄鑽石層由單晶構成，比晶體陣列散熱效果更好。但這種薄層製造起來更困難，因此成本也更高。
該公司透過製造富含碳的高溫氣體或等離子體，誘導其精確地沉積碳原子到一個恰好的正確組態來製造鑽石。根據該公司介紹，關鍵步驟是誘導每顆鑽石開始結晶，就像它們生長在一層現有的、排列完整的鑽石之上一樣。
其真正結果是提點了新碳原子如何組合在一起。該公司網站稱，如果不按照該指示去進行，「就像多人不使用模板而試圖去從房間的不同起點鋪設地板：他們會在中間某個地方相遇，而無法拼合」成一個單一, 完整的晶體。
（待續）
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