Diamonds De Novo

Still, creating a diamond semiconductor is no easy feat. Rather than trying to mimic the conditions under which diamond is generated deep in the earth, Apollo, Element Six and most of the other leading diamondmakers are relying on a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD). It's a low-pressure, high-temperature method that uses heat energy from plasma and a combination of gases to rain carbon atoms on a starter seed of the gem, which gradually grows into a larger single-crystal diamond. CVD produces a more uniform, consistent diamond in sizes large enough to make an effective transistor. Using the diamond it created in its reactors as a "mother seed," Apollo Diamond can now grow wafers that are large enough and of a quality that would make them useful in electronic devices. "You need to make mother seeds that will allow you to control the end product," Linares says. "For semiconductor manufacturing, that means an extremely smooth and flat surface. For the first time, we've done that." Over the next 12 months Apollo plans to build up a generation of mother wafers at least an inch in length that can consistently beget more high-quality diamond slivers, and then to enter the industrial market.

Apollo and its competitors are close to perfecting the manufacturing process, but it's unlikely that man-made diamond will replace silicon entirely. Diamond manufacturing remains expensive, even after several spikes in silicon-wafer prices over the past year. But semiconductor researchers remain optimistic about diamond's future role; at the very least, a combination of silicon and diamond could produce more powerful devices that run at cooler temperatures. Says Mike Mayberry, director of components research at Intel: "We're still interested enough to keep an eye on it."

Also tracking the progress of diamondmaking are biologists, who covet the gem's inertness--it doesn't react with other substances--and its ability to retain its structural integrity despite being bathed in natural acids and other organic compounds. One possible application: diamond-based electrodes, implanted under the skin, that could be designed to react chemically in the presence of certain proteins. Already, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed such a prototype for detecting levels of a protein critical to nerve-cell activity.

Since it may be another decade before such medical applications of diamond become a reality, for now Apollo is using the same CVD process to produce gem-quality stones for the retail market. Just last year the company started selling rough-cut gems to a Boston jewelry retailer. It may prove to be a smart strategy until the industrial market matures; thanks to booming economies in China and India, retail sales of diamond jewelry have been surging for a decade. Analysts expect up to 20% annual growth in the diamond market in China alone. With current mine capacities, that translates to a potential $10 billion worth of unmet demand by 2015--a gap that man-made diamonds could soon help fill. In support of the nascent field, last month the Gemological Institute of America, the leading grader of diamonds, agreed to rate synthetic diamonds on the same four Cs--carat, cut, color and clarity--used to evaluate natural diamonds. So even after the last stone is mined, perhaps one day diamonds really will be forever.