India, Netherlands Explore Lab-Grown Diamond Chips

New Delhi: India and the Netherlands can collaborate in research for using lab-grown diamonds to produce semiconductors. Traditional business of lab-grown diamonds provides a common linkage between the Netherlands, Belgium and India's Surat district, a senior government official said on Thursday.

Addressing the CII Indo-Dutch Tech Summit, Electronics and IT secretary S Krishnan said India has no dearth of talent and Indians are engaged in top level research across the world and even in the latest large AI models rolled out by artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, Mistral etc. “Collaboration with the Netherlands brings a lot of value addition to the country's semiconductor goal as it houses companies like ASML, which makes the photolithography machines that are used for manufacturing chips and also has a monopoly in some of the areas,” Krishnan said.

While India’s electronics production has grown multifold to Rs 9.52 lakh crore in 2023-24 from Rs 1.9 lakh crore in 2014-15, the Economic Survey report tabled in Parliament last week noted that there has been limited progress in design and component manufacturing by the industry.

“The way that lab-grown diamonds can actually be sliced and growing crystals of diamonds is something very similar to the space of growing silicon carbide crystals and other crystals used in the manufacturing of semiconductors. People now believe that diamond and lab-grown diamonds themselves can be a very useful substrate for semiconductors,” Krishnan said.

The secretary, however, said that that's an area of research which can actually be encouraged. “Some of it is also based in the Netherlands, and some of it, of course, based in India and Surat and other places. So clearly, there are many, many areas that we can collaborate in,” he added.

Krishnan said that in India most of the research expenditure has been done so far by the government and industry expenditure on research, unfortunately, hasn't met those goals primarily because most of the companies are engaged in providing services. “India has no dearth of talent and Indians are engaged in top level research across the world and even in the latest large AI models rolled out by artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, Mistral etc,” he added.

The IT secretary also said that if industry comes up with their own money, then the government is even willing to provide exclusive rights for use of that technology for a while. “We are extremely happy to support both academic institutions and industry in taking forward the research and development, because I think that is where truly India's potential lies. As we rise in the innovation index, we need to go further, and will be doing injustice to the extremely talented youth of the country,” he said.