Can diamond overcome silicon’s thermal limits? A materials platform is advancing electronics for AI, quantum sensing and extreme environments.
Great Lakes Crystal Technologies (GLCT), a startup spun out of Michigan State University (MSU), is developing semiconductor-grade diamond materials aimed at addressing the thermal and performance challenges facing next-generation electronics. The company is using custom chemical vapour deposition (CVD) reactors to produce high-purity, single-crystal diamond substrates that could support applications ranging from AI hardware and power electronics to quantum technologies.
As computing platforms become more powerful, heat dissipation has emerged as a major constraint for semiconductor devices. While silicon remains the dominant material for electronic chips, its thermal conductivity limits performance in high-power and high-temperature environments. Diamond offers significantly higher thermal conductivity while also tolerating elevated temperatures, radiation and high electric fields, making it a potential material for more compact, efficient and reliable electronic systems used in aerospace, defence, energy and industrial applications.
The technology is based on custom-designed CVD reactors and process control techniques that produce single-crystal diamond substrates with the size, purity and crystal quality required for semiconductor manufacturing. Developed from decades of research at Michigan State University led by Professor Timothy Grotjohn, the platform is designed to improve manufacturing scalability and material consistency. Beyond thermal management, the company is also engineering quantum-grade diamond substrates with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres that enable highly sensitive measurements of magnetic fields, temperature and pressure for emerging quantum sensing applications.
“The limits we’re hitting in electronics are not just about software or computing power anymore—they’re about materials. Diamond offers a path forward because it manages heat better and performs where traditional materials start to break down. The challenge has never been whether diamond has the right properties. The challenge is producing it in the right form, at the right quality and in a way that fits real applications,” says Jonathan Charak, Chief Executive Officer of Great Lakes Crystal Technologies.
