China is exploring an ambitious approach to strengthening its position in the global AI race: the development of ultra-large synthetic diamond wafers capable of supporting future generations of high-performance chips. According to a report in the South China Morning Post, researchers at the Harbin Institute of Technology have demonstrated a technique that could eventually lead to diamond wafers as wide as a basketball, opening new possibilities for semiconductor manufacturing and AI computing.
The research is led by Zhu Jiaqi and colleagues, who have been advancing microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD), a method for growing high-quality synthetic diamond. Their work addresses one of the most pressing challenges in AI hardware: heat. As AI processors become more powerful, they consume increasing amounts of electricity and generate substantial heat, limiting performance and raising operating costs.
Diamond offers a compelling solution because it possesses thermal conductivity far superior to that of silicon, silicon carbide, and other semiconductor materials. By transferring heat away from chips more efficiently, diamond substrates could allow processors to operate faster, consume less energy, and support denser computing systems. Such capabilities are becoming increasingly important as demand for AI training and inference accelerates worldwide.
The article notes that Chinese companies are also becoming active in the field. Among them is Chaoying Diamond Technology, which attracted attention after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly visited the company during a trip to China. The visit underscored growing industry interest in diamond-based technologies and their potential role in future semiconductor ecosystems.
While significant manufacturing hurdles remain, including scaling production and reducing costs, researchers believe continued progress could transform synthetic diamond from a specialty material into a strategic component of advanced computing infrastructure. If successful, large-area diamond wafers could provide China with a distinctive advantage in addressing the thermal and energy constraints that increasingly define the future of AI hardware.