Every year, the world consumes more than 10,000 tons of diamond superabrasives, which are indispensable for fields such as construction, metals, ceramics, automobiles, semiconductors, computers, and cellular phones. In fact, the per capita consumption of superabrasives may be used as an indicator of a country's industrial activities.
This volume presents several aspects of superhard materials, especially diamond superabrasives and their manufacture, properties, and applications, and introduces several new designs of ultrahard materials that may be harder than diamond. It discusses diamond's connection with the origin of life, in particular, the origin of the first RNA. In addition, it throws light on the concept of diamond quantum computers with neutrons of the carbon-13 isotope as quantum bits. This innovation may maintain quantum coherence with minimal interference without using complicated cryogenic cooling. Hence, it can be a robust design for future quantum computers. For those interested in the depth of the quantum mechanical world, a chapter elaborates the history of life and humanity in light of the evolution of quantum universes.
About the Author: James Sung received his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976. Since then until 1984, he was responsible for the high-pressure technology of manufacturing various types of industrial diamonds at General Electric (then the world's largest diamond maker). Subsequently, he set up Diamond Technology Center for Norton (then the world's largest diamond user), which fostered Norton Diamond Film (the world's largest chemical vapor deposition diamond maker around 2000). Dr. Sung transferred diamond technology to startup Iljin Diamond (Korea) in 1986, which later became Asia's largest diamond maker, and to Zhongnan Diamond and Huanghe Whirlwind (China) in 2003, which became and are still the world's largest diamond makers.
In 1994, Dr. Sung established a diamond-brazing technology for the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan. In 1997, he invented diamond grid technology and made Kinik Company the global leader of diamond pad conditioners, an indispensible consumable for the manufacture of integrated circuits worldwide. In 2011, he transferred diamond-like carbon (DLC) technology to Right Diamond and made the world's first DLC-cooled LED, which was later manufactured by Formosa Group (the largest company in Taiwan). Dr. Sung applied for over 1000 patents and has published over 100 papers and books. He has licensed technologies to 3M, Abrasive Technology, Tomei Diamond, EHWA, Ritek Group, and several other companies.
