Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

massive crushing pressure is not the only way to create diamond particles.

Lab diamonds are used in huge quantities (ie. By the bucketful ) for making cutting tools like saws and drill bits.

I believe the main difficulty is making large and pure diamonds. Making small low purity diamonds is cheap and easy to scale.

> why?

>> 50x faster switching

It's hard to say which applications will benefit the most, but orders of magnitude improvement tend to enable qualitative shifts downstream.

Not to mention, 1000x is just the cost right now while the tech is new.

If I'm reading this correctly it's two or threefold. Faster switching times, which both increases max speed and reduces power consumption. Avoids flaws due to silicon doping, presently we add ions to silicon to get P or N type junctions and they've found a way to get P type junctions using "2D Hole Gas" which is basically a thin layer of voids inside the bulk diamond crystal after treatment and avoids a category of flaws that affect silicon yields. Third, and this is speculation, but diamond has a way higher thermal conductivity and lower thermal expansion coefficient, so it can likely withstand higher temps and conduct heat away faster.

I believe these are hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to the carbon atoms on the surface of the diamond.

The hydrogen is not a gas.

It is a very good thermal conductor, but not the best. At low temperatures, copper is better. At very low temperatures, helium is much better.

Superfluid helium's maximum thermal conductivity is roughly 100x diamond's maximum!

Make a Point Contact Transistor at home https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmotkjMSKnI