Summary of Current Research Programmes

There are four main research activities in this area:

Ion-assisted coatings
Chemical Vapour Deposition

The Ion-Assisted Coatings activity, headed by Professor John Colligon, is based on the production of thin film coatings using Ion-Assisted Deposition with particular emphasis on the understanding of the relationship between film properties and deposition parameters. The research group is internationally recognised with achievements in MAX alloys and nanocomposite hard coatings, corrosion-resistant layers and optical coatings. A new range of coatings is now being developed with applications in sustainable energy systems including fuel cells and photovoltaic devices.

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The Chemical Vapour Deposition activity has two sections. The first, based on hot filament CVD, focuses on functional applications for polycrystalline and nanocrystalline thin diamond films and is internationally recognised in this field. Current work includes the control of surface morphology and grain size for optical applications, development of diamond based electrodes for electrochemical applications and biomedical diamond coatings, e.g. diamond coated dental burs, artificial heart valves, hip prostheses. The research group has developed a new technique known as Time Modulated CVD of Diamond in collaboration with Aveiro University (Portugal) and a method to synthesise significant quantities of hydrogenated and methylated fullerenes by gas phase reactions. Work has recently started on synthesising diamond nanorods using zeolites as templates
The second section studies plasma-assisted CVD using an ECR source and a range of pressures to form larger area coatings .

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