In early July 2015, the 65th Diamond Conference was held at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. It is noteworthy that the Warwick University campus hosts a large number of simultaneous conferences, making the campus a vibrant environment where professionals from a diverse pool of disciplines get to interact socially. Not unlike the campus environment, the Diamond conference itself provides a platform for interdisciplinary interaction of professionals all specializing in specific aspects of diamond. Each successive day of the conference was dedicated to a specific field of research in diamond, namely – Day 1) theoretical physics , 2) experimental physics, 3) gemmology and 4) mechanics and novel applications. Such structure enables a fascinating glimpse into the various research fields within diamond and highlights potential points of contact for the professionals in seemingly disparate fields of research.
Exciting topics in quantum computing in diamond, novel laser construction, identification of illegal synthetic diamonds in gemmology trade and geological story told to us by the diamonds found in nature were but some of the very interesting topics. While much can be written about the various presentations, the conference has a confidential nature and has to be respected.
The combined result of research carried out between Stellenbosch and Cape Town Universities into in-situ observation of slow crack propagation in polycrystalline diamond was presented by Serguei Petrov. The technique, for the first time, enables truly slow and controllable crack propagation in polycrystalline diamond while allowing for observation by scanning electron and optical microscopy. Such controlled propagation and capture of the fracture process facilitates further use of novel, quantitative image data processing techniques to extract a number of important parameters such as strain, full field displacement and stress intensity. It is believed such non-contact methodologies have a bright future.
It has to be said that South Africa was well represented by quality research presented by delegates from University of Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.