While the world waits impatiently for high temperature superconductors to revolutionise the world of integrated circuitry, another material is waiting in the wings for its turn in the sun – thin film diamond: the Wall Street Journal reports that Crystallume Inc in Palo Alto, California has a technique for laying down a thin film of diamond crystals by combining methane and Hydrogen at 427`C, and the material promises to offer much better heat conductivity than Silicon, so that circuits could be packed more tightly, as well as being relatively radiation- immune.
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