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A comment on Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon?.

Re:Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? by arijon on Monday April 04, 2016 @04:03PM (#11425045)
If you are interested, read up on SiC, Silicon Carbide. It is better then Gallium Nitride and Silicon for high voltage power small electronics because it has higher thermal conductivity. I randomly learned about it when I was fixing my cars breaks, apparently that is the material that is used :)
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Re:Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? by blacksmith_tb on Monday April 04, 2016 @06:40PM (#11426324)
It can also be quite pretty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite
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Re:Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? by ribs on Monday April 04, 2016 @07:12PM (#11426518)
Difficult to machine, though, I'd expect, being among the hardest of all known substances (the moissanite polymorph being just a bit softer than diamond, at a Mohs scale hardness of 9.5.)
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Re:Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? by Florin_Andrei on Monday April 04, 2016 @07:37PM (#11426658)
> I randomly learned about it when I was fixing my cars breaks, apparently that is the material that is used :)

What is it used for?

I'm familiar with SiC in the form of grit (grinding agent, looks like fine-grained sand) when I'm making telescope optics. It's extremely hard, and it grinds glass better than anything except diamond.

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Re:Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? by arijon on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @08:07PM (#11435637)
The disk break...I guess because it has high thermal resistance. You make telescope optics? For fun or work? or both?
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Re:Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? by Florin_Andrei on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @11:03PM (#11436317)
Just a hobby at the moment. Working on a 300 mm mirror right now.
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Re:Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? by arijon on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @02:49PM (#11440857)
That awesome dude. I got into amateur astronomy about two years ago when I first moved to the bay area from new york. I just purchased a celestron nextstar 4SE can't wait to test it out.
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Re:Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? by madengr on Monday April 04, 2016 @10:15PM (#11427323)
GaN is grown on SiC; best of both.
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Re:Gallium nitride is about to disrupt silicon? by arijon on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @08:07PM (#11435641)
ahh I didn't know that.
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