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| MORGaN Consortium 4 Element Six Ltd. |
 |
Contact Richard Balmer
Location Ascot, UK
Overview
Element Six (formerly De Beers Industrial Diamonds) was formed in 1947 to
address the industrial market for machining with natural diamond. During the
1980s, it was discovered that diamond could be synthesised by Chemical Vapour
Deposition (CVD). E6 has been a pioneer in the development of CVD diamond
technology, with a world-renowned research centre at Ascot (UK) dedicated to
this activity. CVD Diamond is a unique material which opens up many new
application areas outside the traditional abrasive uses of the material. E6
started selling CVD diamond products on a truly commercial basis in the
mid-1990’s (examples include laser windows, windows for high-power gyrotrons
and heat-spreaders for electronic devices).
Main research topics and capabilities
CVD diamond activity within E6 is concentrated in the
“Technologies” business unit based in Ascot, UK, where CVD diamond is
synthesised and processed. E6 has world leading diamond R&D, synthesis and
material processing technology (know how) in Ascot, UK and is currently the
leading supplier of all types of polycrystalline CVD diamond. In 2002, the E6
Ascot laboratory became the first group in the world to demonstrate the
synthesis of electronic device quality, single crystal CVD diamond. Today,
synthetic single crystal diamond (formed by both high pressure, high temperature
and CVD routes) is commercially available.
MORGaN tasks
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Supply of diamond-based wafers suitable for III-N epitaxy
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Develop and optimise the synthesis and primary processing of silicon/poly-diamond composite wafers.
