Diamond Group awarded EPSRC grant for Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) equipment research

12 April 2023

The School of Chemistry's diamond research group, together with Space Forge, a Cardiff-based satellite-technology company, have been awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant under the Knowledge Transfer Partnerships scheme to develop a method to convert existing Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) equipment to create materials that can fit inside a satellite.

This will enable the deposition of ultra-high purity diamond and other high-value semiconductor materials in zero-gravity, which should lead the way for such materials to be fabricated and commercialised for a variety of high-tech applications. The project is funded £173,200 by the EPSRC with £25,000 from Space Forge.

The project, led by Professor Paul May and Dr Ed Smith (Space Forge, who completed his PhD in the Diamond group) will fund a researcher for 18 months who will be based in the Diamond Labs and will work out how to modify the existing CVD reactors to create a reactor that is small enough, and light enough, to fit inside a satellite. This knowledge will then be transferred to the company so they can fabricate a prototype CVD reactor.

The plan is for this reactor to be launched into space and tested in about two years’ time.