Industrial Diamond Helps To Make The Perfect Loudspeaker

4-Feb-05

A collaboration between Element Six and Bowers & Wilkins (B&W), has resulted in the use of diamond as the new material for the latest generation of speaker systems. The new 800 Series by B&W uses tweeter domes made of CVD diamond. The unique physical properties of diamond help to create a loudspeaker range having unprecedented technical specifications.Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) is a new method of diamond synthesis that can be compared to frost forming on a window - only the process uses carbon rather than water. A mixture of gases is heated to very high temperatures to produce carbon atoms in the form of a plasma. Out of the gases the diamond crystals can grow on complex, 3D shapes - such as tweeter domes.Dr Gary Geaves, Head of Research at B&W said, ""A theoretically perfect tweeter dome - with infinite stiffness and zero mass - would remain rigid throughout the audible frequency scale and well beyond it. The material that gets closest to this ideal behavior is diamond.""Element Six's MD, Christian Hultner, added, ""This tweeter is an exciting global launch of a consumer product that should have widespread appeal. We believe that this product will stimulate awareness of diamond as a new engineering material and we are committed to making this the first of many new consumer products.""All loudspeakers in the 800 Series, having the suffix D to denote diamond, will carry the Diamond at Work logo to demonstrate the use of diamond as a performance-enhancing ingredient.

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