You are cordially invited to the Professorial Inaugural lecture given by Professor Paul May:
Monday 5th March 2012, 6.00pm, in Lecture Theatre 1 in the School
of Chemistry, University of Bristol. Free entry, wine & nibbles will
be provided after the lecture.
This will also be a reunion for Budgies past & present, so we will
probably go out for a curry & a few beers afterwards as well!
Diamonds are a Scientist’s best friend
Diamond is one of the most extraordinary materials known. For almost any physical
property you can think of, diamond is top of the list. It is the hardest, strongest
and stiffest known material, it conducts heat better than copper, is transparent
from the deep ultraviolet to the far infrared, is resistant to acids and bases, and
has one of the lowest thermal expansion coefficients. However, until recently
diamond has only been available in the form of gemstones, obtained from mines.
These are prized for jewellery, but have only limited engineering or scientific
applications.
However, over the past 20 years,
scientists have discovered how to
produce thin films of pure diamond,
using as a starting material nothing
more exotic than methane and
hydrogen gases. The extraordinary
properties of diamond have already
enabled such films to find applications
as hard, wear-resistant coatings in
engineering components and machine
tools, as heat spreaders, and as specialised optical windows. The possibility of
doping the films to produce semiconducting diamond, suggests exciting future
applications for these materials as electronic devices and sensors. Furthermore,
the unusual electron emission properties of diamond make it a candidate for the
electrode in the next generation of flat panel displays, solar cells or even quantum
computers.
In this talk, I will describe how diamond films are produced and outline some of the
important chemistry and physics of the deposition process. I shall also discuss the
various uses of these films, and speculate about some of the more exciting potential
future applications, such as quantum computing, biosensors, brain-computer
interfaces and designer neural nets.