Ribbon cutting for the new $75 million dollar East Science Hall (ESH) and South Science Hall (SSH) took place on Thursday, August 17, 2023. Visitors from on and off campus participated in the festivities which included guided tours of the building’s research labs, teaching labs, new offices and much more. ESH and SSH house the Departments of Physics, Biology and Chemistry. Dr. Yogesh K. Vohra, Professor of Physics and University Scholar, had the pleasure of leading the tour of the diamond fabrication lab along with Q&A about the process and uses.
Below is an excerpt of an extensive article by Al.com on Dr. Vohra’s process for growing diamonds:
The Microwave Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition reactor (CVD), which uses microwave power to break down methane and hydrogen gases to grow diamonds in the lab, has now been moved to a basement room of the new building. The South Science Hall and East Science Hall, part of the new Science and Engineering Complex, opened Thursday.
Large tanks are ready to combine methane and hydrogen into a mixture to produce high-pressure, high-temperature, nitrogen-doped synthetic diamonds. Yogesh Vohra, professor of physics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, held up several samples of yellow diamond crystals made in UAB’s lab to show a tour group.
You can read the full article here.
