Diamond Thermal Conductivity: A New Era in Chip Cooling | Hacker News Reader

Diamond Thermal Conductivity: A New Era in Chip Cooling

spectrum.ieee.org

78 pointsrbanffy43 comments

Have diamonds found their way into other industrial cooling solutions? With the research into gem grade diamonds, I have been expecting cheap ugly synthetic diamonds to be used in more products. I have long joked that I want a diamond frying pan.

> I have long joked that I want a diamond frying pan

As long as you don’t use it on a gas stove, you should be fine.

Why? Diamond has very low thermal expansion, so no risk of stress/embrittlement/cracks from uneven heating.

Or you mean it'll catch fire? Also not a concern. That is supposed to happen at a temperature well above anything useful for cooking.

I think because it will burn your hand?

It’s safe to assume the handle is made from something else.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ce/48/41/ce4841a736a6c566212837c22...

The temperature of the blue flame on a stove should be above 1000 Celsius, well above what’s required to oxidise diamonds. They won’t catch fire, but your diamond pan will erode. Once you remove it from the flame, it won’t continue “burning”.

Should be safe on electrical stoves though.

Would that >1000°C reach the surface though?

There are some heady boundary-layer effects and temperature/temp-conductivity gradient physics involved here. For simplicity sake, consider a plastic [1] bag full to the brim with water, held over open flame. Will bag melt (oxidize, erode)?

[1] polyethylene melts around 120-ish °C and ignites around 220-350 °C (sources vary)

Someone sells a diamond coated pan https://bluediamondshopping.com/

It's probably fine on the inside?

Why are you using a question mark.

The material would be 'fine', but I'm not sure how safe or effective it would be as I'm not a materials expert. Just considering the risk of the material. (Yeah, the material would be fine, is it safe and beneficial? That part of 'fine' I can't define.)

That's a good point. Have you done the experiment?

Just put them on inside only

But wasn't the point that diamond is a great hear conductor?

It would still work, if the bottom cladding were very thin, and a decent conductor.

> ugly synthetic diamonds

Not any more, their quality has increased recently. Not that I care, wife and I did without them during our engagement.

I think the point was not that gem-grade synthetic diamonds are ugly, but that, as industry masters gem-grade production, presumably below-gem-grade production (“ugly synthetic diamonds”) would become cheap enough to deploy in more engineering settings where diamond’s other unique properties were the key concern.

I’m surprised nobody has done a phone screen yet

Large single crystal diamond, what is required for a nice transparent screen, is still quite expensive. This article is about polycrystalline diamond, which is not really that transparent, but is nearly as good at thermal conduction as monocrystalline diamond.

Your comment reminds me of apple's attempt to make sapphire screens. That didn't turn out so well.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/10/sapphire-...

Apple still uses sapphire screens on the nicer watches.

I have a Garmin with a sapphire screen. I've worn it every day for over 5 years, working on cars, in the garden, snorkelling on coral reefs.

In short, I my watch has NOT had an easy life. I've made no attempt to protect it or taken it off for anything except charging. There is barely a mark on the screen. A sapphire screen will be a hard requirement for my next watch.

I wear mine while rock climbing. The watch has been put through a lot of beating against all kinds of rock. I've already chewed through 3 straps on this watch. The titanium case is lightly scratched, but the screen is absolutely pristine!

This is my second sapphire Garmin, and it's absolutely worth the premium.

> I've already chewed through 3 straps on this watch.

Ever consider carrying a protein bar or two?

Even if that were cheap I don't think diamond would excel in this use case. It's of course extremely hard but I'd expect that it would be extremely prone to cracking. In addition the high index of refraction would make the diamond screen very reflective and you would need some fancy coating which of course wouldn't be as strong as diamond.

I don't know why you expect it would be prone to cracking, but it isn't - or else a wedding ring would have a life expectancy shorter than the average marriage.

As for a reflective screen, the term for that is "shiny", and could be marketed as desirable - it signals that the owner has an expensive watch. It wouldn't interfere with use, unless the user was wearing a bright headlamp.

3D printer nozzles, which is sort of the opposite (industrial heating products).

Part of the argument is that better heat conduction means that you can run the nozzle cooler resulting in less heat conduction to the cold side (above where you want the filament to melt) so I guess its "cooling" in a sense too.

> But my research group at Stanford University has managed what seemed impossible.

Wait a minute, others have been doing this already: https://www.df.com/

How is this different?