MICROCHIPS made of diamond have come a step closer after engineers succeeded in making the material into a semiconductor. Diamond chips could be invaluable in radar and satellite transmitters, as they would need less energy than silicon chips to cool them, and they wouldn’t burn out as quickly.
Engineers have been interested in diamond as an alternative to silicon for more than a decade. Silicon circuits become unreliable at 150 °C and stop working altogether at 200 °C. Diamond-based circuits, on the other hand, could work at 400 °C and above. A radar trasmitter with diamond electronics could transmit 100…
