With the holiday season upon us, we hope like us you are celebrating the successes of the past year and have great plans for the year ahead!

2015 has seen Element Six’s synthetic diamond play a role in developments that are truly advancing technology – from the latest high power lasers that cut through steel, to furthering research into quantum computing.  We were also honored to receive two industry awards for our GaN-on-Diamond semiconductor wafers, and excited to be involved in a customer’s successful new product pilot of wastewater treatment technology – we hope to share more details in our next newsletter!

Over the past few months we’ve attended the IMAPS Microelectronics symposium, where we presented new findings on the thermal management capabilities of diamond heat spreaders, and celebrated the University of Strathclyde’s 20th Anniversary of the Institute of Photonics where we presented on the use of diamond for new laser applications.

Looking ahead to 2016, we expect to see continued expansion of diamond’s use for thermal management of GaN devices and also for diamond optics in applications such as military travelling wave tube (TWT) and IR imaging.

I wish you all a wonderful festive season and a prosperous 2016!

Best wishes,

Bruce Bolliger
Head of Sales and Marketing at
Element Six Technologies

ELEMENT SIX UPDATES

Our latest product and research news

INTRODUCING DIAMOND PUREOPTICS^TM - ENABLING ORDER OF MAGNITUDE HIGHER OPTICS PERFORMANCE FOR HIGH POWER LASER SYSTEMS

We launched our new optics range – Diamond PureOptics™.
​This all-diamond optical solution eliminates the need for thin film coatings resulting in a more than 10 times increase in laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) for improved reliability and even higher power density levels – for applications such as EUV Lithography.

Element Six diamond specially engineered with a nitrogen vacancy defect has enabled a landmark experiment in quantum mechanics. Element Six’s Matthew Markham and Dan Twitchen were amongst those that co-authored a paper published by Nature.com. Learn more here.

Using our low absorption single crystal diamond, MQ Photonics demonstrated a laser that delivered up to 380 Watts of output power.  That’s the equivalent of approximately 400,000 laser pointers and enough power to cut through steel! Find more information here.

WHY DIAMOND PUREOPTICS™ PROVIDES A STEP CHANGE IN HIGH POWER LASER PERFORMANCE

Our new Diamond PureOptics™ optical windows with built in anti-reflective Meta-Surface (MS) structures significantly outperform the industry standard thin film AR coatings - Why? Because the all-diamond solution eliminates the requirement for these coatings which can have mechanical and thermal material properties 1,000 times inferior to those intrinsic to diamond.

This means high power CO₂ laser system manufacturers can exploit diamond’s exceptional hardness, thermal conductivity and wide transmission spectrum to the full, enabling:

1. Higher power densities, with lower losses – reduced system breakdown as optical power densities increase

- For EUV lithography applications
- Other high power CO₂ laser systems

- Decreases overall window absorption
- Minimizes thermally induced beam distortion
- Reflectance (less than 0.5% per surface) and transmission
  (above 99%) equivalent to AR coated diamond optics   
- Weak angular dependence (<10°) from normal on reflection

- >10x greater laser induced damage threshold (LIDT)
  than thin film coated optics
- Extreme mechanical robustness (>100x)
- Excellent scratch resistance

For more information on Diamond PureOptics™ click here.

Q: What is your role at Element Six? How long have you been with the company?

A: I’m responsible for all production activities at our sites in Santa Clara (US) and in Ascot (UK), where I’m primarily based.  I’ve been with Element Six for 12 years - until this year in the Abrasives part of the Element Six business. I most recently spent 3 years as Operations Manager at our largest facility in South Africa, followed by 2 years as General Manager at one of our plants in China.

Q: Looking back to 2015, what were the priorities for operational improvements, and what has been successfully achieved?

A: Since I started working in the Technologies team we have been focused on delivery to our customers. Already our new Sales & Operational planning process has achieved:

1. 15% increase in delivery performance in 2015
      compared to 2014
2.  30% reduction in our demonstrated overall lead-time
      year on year
3.  Shortened response time for customer service
      enquiries and requests

Having laid the groundwork we are looking forward to further significant response-time improvements in 2016.

Q: What is the Element Six Technologies team targeting to improve operationally in 2016?

A: Our number one goal at Element Six is Zero Harm. We are proud to have had another year free of Lost Time Injuries (LTI) in 2015 across the Technologies Group– a record it is critical that we maintain. 

Operationally, in 2016 we are focused on increasing yield, efficiency and capacity to further reduce our lead-times, and improve delivery to our customers. We have expanded our Operations team and committed to increase capital expenditure for improved efficiency in our operational structure in order to respond to growing demand. 
Also, we are putting technical resources in place to continue the process improvement work started in 2015, in particular in the areas of cleanliness, brazing and birefringence. We aim always to have the best product in the market through this continuous improvement.

Q: Tell us something about yourself that people might be surprised to know?

A: My favourite question! Well, not many people know I can, or at least I could, play both the Bagpipes and the Didgeridoo!