Artificial Diamonds

[CQuinn]

In the past week there were a couple of news stories about new methods
that have been developed to create artificials diamonds that are at
equal (to better) quality to their naturally mined counterparts.

What struck me from the news items was not so much the possibility of
offerring serious competition to the diamond brokers of the world; as
the potential these methods offer for technology.

What is being proposed now are methods of producing pure diamond wafers
for the semiconductor industry. But what occured to me was if they
can (in the future) produce enough synthetic diamond to create those
wafers in quantity, then they could probably do the same for disk
platters on future hard drives.

Anyone care to speculate on how this could enhance drive technology,
or other aspects of the industry?

 

[sgtroyer]

They could, but why? The material properties necessary for magnetic storage are very different than for semiconductors. The motivation for using them for semiconductors is, I think, superior heat conductivity and high melting point. I don't think these are really relevant for drive platters, even if it would work, which I suspect it wouldn't.

 

[AbsolutDealage]

repost.

 

[Mday]

thing is, diamond is VERY brittle. you would diamond coat the platters, not really have an entire platter of diamond. some companies are working on coatings for longer platter life for platters, as well as higher densities. furthermore, the crystal lattice is very sensitive to harmonics, they break if the right frequencies are applied to it.