Element Six seeks 'quantum' breakthrough with synthetic diamonds

The Element Six plant in Shannon was the first facility for De Beers outside South Africa.

International industrial diamonds maker Element Six – best known in Ireland for its long-established plant in Shannon, Co Clare – has caused a scientific stir after announcing a research linkup in the US with Amazon Web Services, or AWS, the huge data centre and cloud computing unit of the online shopping giant.

It’s unusual for any single research collaboration to attract any excitement whatsoever, but a host of mainstream and scientific journals worldwide jumped on the news that researchers at AWS in the US plan to work to develop or “grow” synthetic diamonds in a laboratory for purposes that would go well beyond the technology and uses that Element Six has been doing with synthetic crystals at its worldwide facilities.

Catching the eye was the potential for the work to lead to the development of so-called quantum networks and computers.

Any such breakthrough could have widespread implications for computer networks and the production of equipment that, as Bloomberg reported, could allow “networks of quantum computers — long the realm of science fiction — to become a reality”.

For AWS, future technologies could be used in its host of data centres that straddle the world. For Element Six, the collaboration promises an exciting new direction for its expertise in growing synthetic diamonds.

On the Element Six website, Bartholomeus Machielse, a quantum research scientist at AWS, mapped out the potential around the growing synthetic diamonds to develop new quantum technology that could spawn secure networks, sensors, and potentially quantum computers.

Natural diamonds are created very slowly by intense tectonic pressure under the Earth from the element of carbon, or the sixth element in the periodic table from which Element Six, which is owned by De Beers, takes its name.

The natural crystals are among the toughest in the world and are prized for their purity and their blue and pink hues when they interact with light.

But the colours also betray a large number of so-called defect atoms that would limit their use for developing new technologies for quantum networks and computing.

It’s unlikely that the US collaboration announced with AWS will have a direct impact on the Shannon site, but any new technologies for the Element Six would build on the group’s immense international research efforts over many decades in growing synthetic diamonds, a technique based on layering carbon atoms in manufacturing plants.

The large Shannon plant located at one corner of the industrial estate close to the airport was opened as far back as 1961. It was the first facility for De Beers outside South Africa, as the natural diamonds firm went on to develop synthetic industrial diamonds and tungsten carbide tools for the oil drilling, mining, and aerospace industries.

Element Six was an anchor tenant even before most of Shannon Town was built and is still known by many by its original name of De Beers Industrial Diamond.

The group now has major plants in Britain, Germany, and the US. Siobhán Duffy, who was a senior executive for many years for Element Six working out of Shannon, was appointed as the group’s chief executive earlier this year.

On the new collaboration, AWS said that Harvard and MIT scientists have used the properties of Element Six synthetic diamonds to demonstrate the feasibility of making of “memory-enhanced quantum communication” over long distances.

“Advances in plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition, known as Pecvd, over the last 20 years have enabled the growth of individual plates of diamond with sufficient purity and orderliness for quantum applications,” wrote Mr Machielse, the AWS scientist.

“Pecvd growth enables the formation of diamonds hundreds or thousands of times purer than the Regent Diamond, the famously pure natural diamond on display in the Louvre. In the best Pecvd diamond less than one in a million atoms are impurities - compared to one in a thousand for most natural diamonds,” he said.

“Continuing to invest in Pecvd diamond technology will be critical to enabling its utilisation for quantum applications,” according to AWS.

“Diamond’s optical and quantum properties make it uniquely promising for quantum networking and quantum communications applications – but lack of widespread access to different grades and morphologies of diamond has long been a challenge for the field,” AWS and Element Six said.

“Element Six and AWS are working together to develop new technologies to make diamond a more flexible and accessible material – helping drive growth and progress for this technology.”