cd /news/artificial-intelligence/could-a-diamond-wafer-as-wide-as-a-b… · home topics artificial-intelligence article
[ARTICLE · art-28986] src=scmp.com ↗ pub= topic=artificial-intelligence verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Could a diamond wafer as wide as a basketball be China’s trump card in AI race?

China's Harbin Institute of Technology has developed technology to produce large synthetic diamond wafers, potentially as wide as a basketball, using microwave plasma chemical vapour deposition. These diamonds are increasingly seen as critical for heat dissipation in semiconductors, giving China an unexpected advantage in the AI hardware race.

read1 min views1 publishedJun 16, 2026

From wedding gems to supercomputers, China’s giant synthetic diamonds may reshape the global computing competition Harbin Institute of Technology(HIT) held its 11th group wedding for doctoral students on May 31, each of the 187 newlywed couples was presented with a one-carat diamond ring, with the diamonds grown in the university’s laboratory.

The gems were developed by Zhu Jiaqi and his team from HIT’s School of Astronautics using a technology that in theory could produce high-purity, single crystal diamonds of any shape and size – from wedding jewellery to a wafer as wide as a basketball.

Known as microwave plasma chemical vapour deposition (MPCVD), the process generates carbon atoms in an ultra-clean environment, depositing them layer by layer onto a diamond seed crystal.

artificial intelligencerace enters an era defined by computing power, China is emerging as a leading producer of ultra-large synthetic diamonds – increasingly viewed as critical to dissipating the heat generated by semiconductors.

With chip performance increasingly constrained by the more fundamental physical challenge of heat, a series of breakthroughs in the growing of large single-crystal diamonds could give China an unexpected advantage in next-generation AI hardware.

Jensen Huanghad a meeting with Zhu Yanhui, founder of Chaoying Diamond Technology, a supplier of diamond technology application materials.

── more in #artificial-intelligence 4 stories · sorted by recency
── more on @harbin institute of technology 3 stories trending now
sponsored brought to you by zahid.host 4,200+ EU-deployed projects
reading about agents? ship yours in a single git push.

Run your AI side-project on zahid.host

EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain — perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.

$git push zahid main
Live at https://your-agent.zahid.host
Get free account → Pricing
from €0/mo · no card required
LIVE [news/could-a-diamond-wafe…] indexed:0 read:1min 2026-06-16 ·