Dear Friends,

Happy New Year! I would like to wish you all a very happy 2019, and hope you all had an enjoyable festive season.

As I look ahead to 2019 I find it useful to reflect on 2018. It was a busy year, with the headline at Element Six being the investment of $95m in a new CVD diamond plant in Oregon, USA. The plant is scheduled to come online in early 2020 and will provide exciting new opportunities and significantly greater scale for our CVD business.

2018 saw a range of other firsts exploiting the unique properties of diamond, and particularly the nitrogen vacancy colour centre. Imperial College, London, created the world’s first continuous, room-temperature solid state maser using diamond, in an article that featured on the cover of Nature.

Quantum technologies continue to see significant global investment and engineering these colour centres in diamond provides a key enabler for the area. Diamond was also used to create a prototype magnetometer capable of providing an alternative to satellite-based GPS, as reported in an article from WIRED.

Even beyond this news, 2018 has been a significant year for Element Six CVD. For example one of our partners launched their EnozoPRO spray, which uses the electrochemical properties of diamond electrodes to turn common drinking water into a sanitizer as powerful as chlorine, but without danger or residues. This refillable and reusable solution could transform how surfaces are cleaned.

We look forward to 2019 and further development of these and other uses, whilst we continue to help our partners achieving their objectives through this superlative material.

Best Wishes,
Daniel Twitchen
Sales Director CVD

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ELEMENT SIX UPDATES

Highlights from the last four months:

CVD DIAMOND RESOLVES THERMAL MANAGEMENT ISSUES IN HIGH POWER SEMICONDUCTORS

Whilst materials such as gallium nitride and silicon carbide offer benefits over standard materials for high power densities, the heat produced in these applications offers thermal management challenges. Firooz Faili presents data and modelling that explains why diamond is the solution to the problems that current thermal management designs cannot address. |  Read the article from Power Electronics World

UNDERSTANDING DIAMOND AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH OPTICS

Diamond is a fantastic material for optics, with its low absorption, low thermal expansion, high thermal conductivity and mechanical strength. Henk de Wit offers his insights into why it is such a good optical component. |  Read the article from Photonics Online

CHILDRENS’ BBC FAVOURITE BLUE PETER CELEBRATES DIAMOND ANNIVERSARY WITH CVD DIAMOND BADGE

It was a pleasure to contribute to the Blue Peter diamond anniversary celebrations. Element Six provided two CVD diamond 'badges', one of which was used in an experiment showing the nature of diamond’s chemical reaction with liquid oxygen and its superlative thermal conductivity. |  Watch the episode