Lab-Grown Diamonds in the news...

SCIENTISTS have, for the first time, shown the tiny technology capable of making renewable energy affordable on a mass scale.

It emerged last week that Evince Technology Ltd, based in the Printable Electronics Technology Centre, NetPark, Sedgefield, has developed a diode capable of converting electricity, including that from wind turbines, tidal power and photovoltaics – solar power – more cheaply than existing devices.

Dr Gareth Taylor, Evince Technology’s chief executive, who has been working on the device for ten years, said just one of the tiny diodes could eventually be needed to control power coming from renewable sources, which are more difficult and expensive than traditional power sources to put into the national grid because the amount of power they create fluctuates.

At present, electricity has to be converted using numerous silicon devices, each able to take only 3,300 volts, and transformers.

But the five pence-sized diode developed by Evince needs only a single diamond strip, just half a millimetre thick and grown in the lab, to control 15,000 volts, the level of voltage coming from the National Grid.

Courtesy of The Northern Echo.