US defense contractor Northrop Grumman has won a $7 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to make diamond-cooled chips.

The funding was awarded under Phase II of DARPA’s Technologies for Heat Removal in Electronics at the Device Scale (THREADS) program, which aims to overcome the thermal limits that exist at the transistor level.

Northrop Grumman’s project will see the company integrate diamond-based heat-dissipation technology into next-generation semiconductors for defense-grade chips. In the first phase of the program, Northrop Grumman demonstrated a 3.3x power boost and aims to once again triple power density during the second phase.

In a statement, the defense company said it had recently completed successful high-power tests using diamond as a semiconductor source material, adding that the breakthrough will allow devices to be kept cool whilst still handling high power levels.

“Temperature has long capped what microelectronics can do, even gallium nitride (GaN), which is a standard today,” says Ben Heying, director of microelectronics at Northrop Grumman’s Space Park Foundry. “Embedding diamond directly into chips works like a turbocharged cooling system. It keeps the chips cool, so we can crank up the power without risk of burnout,” he adds. “This breakthrough lets Northrop Grumman’s diamond-cooled chips push beyond traditional heat limits and unlocks a new generation of fast, reliable RF electronics.”

In August, it was announced that BAE Systems had also moved into Phase II of the THREADS program, with a project focused on Gallium Nitride devices.