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AKHAN Semiconductor proposed using engineered diamond films both as semiconductor material and as a way to move heat away from electronics. Its Miraj Diamond platform involved depositing diamond on wafers and doping it for electronic applications—not replacing silicon by simply dropping ordinary diamond into an existing chip line. The idea had research roots and company-reported demonstrations, but the available record does not establish mature, high-volume diamond-chip production.
What did AKHAN mean by a “diamond chip”?
Diamond is known for conducting heat exceptionally well, and it also has properties that make it interesting to researchers exploring electronic devices. AKHAN’s pitch joined those two possibilities: use deposited diamond in semiconductor applications, and use diamond films or components to manage heat in electronics. These are related but distinct uses. A heat-spreading layer does not, by itself, make a device a diamond semiconductor.
The work was not solely an AKHAN invention. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Materials Genome Initiative says Argonne National Laboratory and AKHAN developed diamond semiconductor technologies in 2013. Argonne contributed nanocrystalline diamond deposition technology, while AKHAN contributed a doping process. That history is better described as a research and licensing collaboration than as a technology originating with one party alone.
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The sourced record does not show diamond replacing silicon in mainstream computer-chip manufacturing. It supports a narrower conclusion: AKHAN was pursuing deposited and doped diamond for possible semiconductor and thermal-management applications, while describing a route for customers to adopt its process. A promising material property is not the same as a manufacturable chip platform, and a proposed manufacturing route is not evidence of volume production.
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A useful comparison has to consider more than heat conduction. For diamond, silicon, silicon carbide and other wide-bandgap materials, the relevant questions include thermal performance, electrical performance potential, the availability and quality of doped layers, process integration and fabrication maturity, and evidence of deployed products or volume manufacturing. The sources described here do not establish a validated, apples-to-apples performance comparison across those materials or demonstrate customer production at scale.
How did AKHAN propose to manufacture diamond semiconductor layers?
Chemical vapor deposition on wafers
In a June 23, 2021 EE Times interview, AKHAN founder and chairman Adam Khan said the company had a pilot facility for chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of diamond on silicon wafers. CVD is a process for forming a material layer on a substrate; in this case, the proposed route involved forming diamond films on wafers and adding dopants for electronic use. Khan’s description establishes what the company said it could do at pilot scale at that time, not what it later produced commercially.
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- Wafer Pattern May Vary from the Product Images. Great to be used as gift, display object, exhibition, educating demonstration, testing, decoration or your collection
- Beautiful microchip pattern structure made by the advanced copper technology
- 90~130nm minimum microchip feature Copper Characterization with TEOS or Black Diamond Low-k ILD on the single crystal silicon wafer
- The original value of un-polished wafer is above $500
- No guarantee for research and other applications
A licensing-and-tool plan for higher-volume use
Khan described a manufacturing model in which customers would license AKHAN’s process and install the necessary CVD tool in their own fabs. He said, “A customer would license our process and then bring the tool in-house to insert into their own fab.” He also said the only additional tool needed in a foundry line would be the diamond CVD tool. These were statements about a proposed adoption path in the 2021 interview; they do not verify that customers installed the equipment or reached high-volume production.
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A major obstacle was making suitable doped diamond layers, especially n-type layers. AKHAN’s 2020 patent announcement acknowledged that practical diamond semiconductor applications remained limited in part by the difficulty of fabricating quality n-type material. The announcement described a patented process involving substrate seeding, formation of a diamond layer, and formation of a semiconductor layer containing n-type donor atoms.
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This caveat matters because a material’s theoretical potential does not resolve the challenge of producing consistent, useful layers and integrating them into a device process. A patent describes claimed intellectual property and a process; it does not, on its own, establish reliable manufacturing yield, competitive device performance or commercial readiness.
What performance numbers did AKHAN report?
The figures associated with AKHAN’s pitch should be read as historical company claims or presentation material, not as independent validation of a current product.
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- Thermal conductivity: An AKHAN presentation hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2014 described diamond as “5x better than Copper, 22x better than Silicon” for heat conduction. That is the company’s comparison in its presentation, not an independently validated result established by the available sources.
- Electrical isolation: The same 2014 presentation compared material thicknesses for isolating 10,000 volts, including a 20 μm diamond bar. This was a presentation graphic, not an independently established benchmark.
- Early device figures: In a 2011 company announcement, AKHAN reported a 250 meV shallow ionization energy, carrier mobility above 1,000 cm²/Vs in nanocrystalline diamond thin films, and a diode current-density figure of 900 A/mm² at +2 V forward bias. These are historical promotional claims, not independently reproduced results or specifications for a current product.
- Patent portfolio: EE Times reported in 2021 that Khan described AKHAN’s portfolio as having more than 40 patents worldwide. That is a figure reported at the time, not a current patent count.
These numbers can help explain why the company promoted diamond, but they should not be mistaken for a head-to-head test, a demonstrated production chip, or proof of commercial adoption.
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What happened to AKHAN’s assets and commercialization plans?
On June 20, 2025, Diamond Technologies Inc. (DTI) announced that it had acquired AKHAN Semiconductor’s complete asset portfolio, including patents, trade secrets, intellectual property, proprietary machinery and engineered materials. DTI said its initial focus would include wafer substrates and spreaders for high-performance semiconductors, wear-resistant tooling for chip fabrication, and coatings for optical, defense and display technologies. It also said it was seeking strategic partners for co-development, licensing and technology integration.
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DTI CEO Jerry McGuire characterized the acquired assets as “a viable, scalable path forward for the entire industry.” That is DTI’s assessment of the assets, not an independent finding that the technology is scalable. The June 2025 announcement establishes the acquisition and the company’s stated intentions; it does not establish that those plans have since resulted in commercial deployments or high-volume semiconductor sales.
AKHAN had also announced a 2019 diamond-coating demonstration with Lockheed Martin for aircraft-survivability applications. That is evidence of reported adjacent coating work, not evidence that a diamond semiconductor chip entered production.
What should a reader conclude?
AKHAN’s diamond-chip pitch combined an ambitious semiconductor-material concept with diamond’s potential for thermal management. Its described approach used CVD deposition and doping, and its proposed route to higher-volume adoption relied on customer licensing and added fab equipment. The company’s own patent announcement also recognized a substantial fabrication hurdle in producing quality n-type layers. Historical performance figures remain company-reported, while the latest sourced ownership event is DTI’s 2025 acquisition and its stated plans for selected applications. Together, those facts make diamond an interesting materials-engineering effort—not a demonstrated replacement for silicon chips.
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