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The new Diamond Science and Technology CDT brings together Warwick, Aberystwyth, Bristol, Cardiff, Imperial, Newcastle, Oxford, and Strathclyde universities in partnership with industry to bring diamond research to a new threshold which promises many pioneering diamond enabled technologies and original scientific insights. Together this team will deliver innovative and interdisciplinary training and research that will help cross that threshold and impact significantly in many areas of strategic interest.

The Director of the new Centre, The University of Warwick’s Professor Mark Newton said:

 “Diamond is a highly sought after material, not just because of its aesthetics and allure but because of its un-rivalled utility and multi-functional properties; thermal, mechanical, electrical, optical and more.”

“Research on the synthesis, processing and defect engineering of diamond has reached a pivotal and critical threshold: diamond enabled innovative technologies are emerging with the potential for major advances in basic science and end-application performance. For example, specific placement of defects in diamond paves the way for next-generation quantum computers and sensors capable of detecting single atoms. Biocompatible light-emitting particles can be produced by defect-engineering diamond nanoparticles. These can be tracked in the body using powerful microscopes, functionalised for the targeted delivery of drugs or even used to measure the local temperature in a single cell.”

University of Warwick researcher Professor Julie Macpherson, who is the Taught Course Leader for the Centre, said:

“Interfacing and integrating diamond into electronic devices can solve the biggest problem in electronics today, effective cooling for faster and more reliable devices. In photonics too, diamond holds the key to both lasers that are simultaneously more powerful and compact and to single photon sources for secure data transmission. As the global aerospace and automotive markets increasingly adopt hard-to-machine materials, such as carbon-fibre-reinforced plastics, there is a growing demand for more advanced precision tools capable of machining these materials: for many challenges only engineered diamond and related materials can provide the solution.”

The new Centre will train research students to tackle many such projects. They will be a new breed of graduate researchers that can work across disciplines with a skill-set that enables the multi-disciplinary research challenges to be tackled head on. Those graduates will be a highly skilled multi-disciplinary resource equipped not just for diamond based research but a wide variety of high performance material applications.

The new Centre will bring together 40 leading researchers from the eight partner universities with industrial input embedded throughout. The 1 (MSc) + 3 (PhD) year training programme starts at Warwick with a MSc focussed on all aspects of DST and graduates will emerge, trained with expertise across disciplines covering synthesis, material science, modelling, characterisation, engineering, device integration and material processing, photonics, quantum, entrepreneurship etc. in addition to transferable skills. The students will study for a PhD at one of the partner universities. The MSc mini-projects are thematically linked to the PhD such that the students experience a minimum of three different university or industry research environments during the four year training programme.

Partnership with industry is essential to the vitality of the vision for diamond science and technology. Strategic partnerships have already been established with a range of different companies an example of which is the De Beers Group, a key supporter of the CDT, which has two major diamond research centres in the UK. De Beers Technologies, located in Maidenhead, is at the forefront of developing advanced technical solutions for the global gemstone diamond business. Element Six, an independently managed member of the De Beers Group of Companies, is the world leader in synthetic diamond supermaterials. Element Six applies the extreme properties of synthetic diamond within both abrasive and emerging technologies applications, and has recently opened the world’s largest and most sophisticated synthetic diamond research and development facility; the £20m Global Innovation Centre at Harwell, near Oxford.

Notes for editors:

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK’s main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences. EPSRC invests around £800 million a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change.

Contact details:

Prof Mark Newton Prof Julie Macpherson

m.e.newton@warwick.ac.uk j.macpherson@warwick.ac.uk

Peter Dunn, email: p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk

Head of Communications, Communications Office, University House,

University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 8UW, United Kingdom

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