Diamond will help promote semiconductor materials into a new era beyond Moore's Law!

Recently, Adam Khan, the founder and chairman of AKHAN Semiconductor of the United States, said that it is expected that in 2014, the Argonne National Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy announced an intellectual property licensing agreement with AKHAN, which aims to commercialize diamond semiconductor technology. Currently, with a strong patent portfolio and technology for depositing diamond on silicon substrates, the company's goal is to be the first to test a technology that is expected to continue Moore's Law.

Khan said that the next generation of advanced semiconductor materials needs to solve problems such as high power and lithography. As the density of transistors on the chip increases, it is necessary to add multiple layers of materials as a thermal management layer to reduce the heat at the top and heat loss and other increasingly serious problems. The limitations of silicon materials in terms of efficiency and performance, in addition to changes in packaging, AKHAN Semiconductor believes that diamond may one day replace silicon!

In addition, “diamond is not only the material with the highest thermal conductivity in nature, but its heat dissipation performance is better than any other 3D materials we know. Therefore, using it as an integrated circuit can solve many thermal problems of semiconductor electronic products.”

"In terms of wide band gap materials, diamond is also the best. Compared with traditional materials such as silicon and gallium arsenide, wide band gap (WBG) semiconductors can operate at higher voltages, frequencies and temperatures. Wide band gap semiconductors are often used in radio frequency. Devices, including military radars, etc., have a wide range of applications in the next generation of electronic equipment!

More importantly, Khan said that the widespread use of diamond as a semiconductor material does not require any major changes to the current chip manufacturing process! "The only thing that needs to be inserted is the CVD diamond production process or CVD equipment. Moreover, all the standard semiconductors and measurement equipment used in this process are already in pilot tests."

AKHAN is not far from the Argonne laboratory in northern Illinois, and operates the so-called "diamond mine", which mainly operates the diamond CVD process. "Customers can contract AKHAN for small and medium batch production, but when the output increases, the company is ready to issue licenses and equipment to chip manufacturers, authorize the process, and then build the equipment into their own wafer factories."

According to Khan, the thermal conductivity of diamond is five times that of copper and more than 20 times that of silicon. This will enable the computing speed of microprocessors to reach new heights and give birth to a new generation of microprocessors. Diamond technology will also allow the continuation of Moore's Law. "During operation, the temperature of these devices can mostly drop to room temperature, depending on the type of material being operated and the thickness of the underlying material. But at the operating temperature, our thermal budget can be greatly reduced!

AKHAN Semiconductor's technology is used in optics, display glass and chips, and is used by Lockheed Martin and Honeywell. In addition, a "sizable smartphone device manufacturer", a semiconductor equipment company, and end consumers in the aerospace and defense sectors that Khan did not want to be named are also its customers.

Through cooperation with Argonne National Laboratory, AKHAN Semiconductor has achieved "two major breakthroughs." One is the process of depositing CMOS diamond semiconductors at low temperatures, and the other is a new diamond co-doping technology that can be used for power and logic-based electronic products. AKHAN Semiconductor holds approximately 40 innovative patents worldwide, covering various applications in optics, display glass and semiconductors.

Khan said that there are also other types of companies in the diamond field. For example, Diamond Foundry is manufacturing lab-grown gem materials. According to reports, the market is valued at approximately US$1.8 billion. Diamond Foundry mainly produces high-end luxury diamonds for jewelry.

Diamond is still in its infancy in China. We has accumulated more than ten years of technology in the diamond field, focusing on the development and production of diamond. Currently, there are diamond heat sinks, wafer-level diamonds, diamond coatings (GaN), etc. Mature products provide strong support for the application of diamond semiconductor materials in various fields.