{"slug": "could-a-diamond-wafer-as-wide-as-a-basketball-be-chinas-trump-card-in-ai-race", "title": "Could a diamond wafer as wide as a basketball be China’s trump card in AI race?", "summary": "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.", "body_md": "# Could a diamond wafer as wide as a basketball be China’s trump card in AI race?\n\nFrom wedding gems to supercomputers, China’s giant synthetic diamonds may reshape the global computing competition\n\n[Chao Kong](/author/chao-kong)in Beijing\n\n[Harbin Institute of Technology](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science?module=inline&pgtype=article)(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.\n\nThe 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.\n\nKnown 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.\n\n[artificial intelligence](https://www.scmp.com/news/china-future-tech/ai?module=inline&pgtype=article)race 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.\n\nWith 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.\n\n[Jensen Huang](https://www.scmp.com/topics/jensen-huang?module=inline&pgtype=article)had a meeting with Zhu Yanhui, founder of Chaoying Diamond Technology, a supplier of diamond technology application materials.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/could-a-diamond-wafer-as-wide-as-a-basketball-be-chinas-trump-card-in-ai-race", "canonical_source": "https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3357157/could-diamond-wafer-wide-basketball-be-chinas-trump-card-ai-race?utm_source=rss_feed", "published_at": "2026-06-16 04:00:06+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-16 04:29:09.154702+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-chips", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Harbin Institute of Technology", "Zhu Jiaqi", "Chaoying Diamond Technology", "Zhu Yanhui", "Jensen Huang"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/could-a-diamond-wafer-as-wide-as-a-basketball-be-chinas-trump-card-in-ai-race", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/could-a-diamond-wafer-as-wide-as-a-basketball-be-chinas-trump-card-in-ai-race.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/could-a-diamond-wafer-as-wide-as-a-basketball-be-chinas-trump-card-in-ai-race.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/could-a-diamond-wafer-as-wide-as-a-basketball-be-chinas-trump-card-in-ai-race.jsonld"}}