How can I use Diamond?

There are two main routes to working with Diamond, through our proprietary and peer reviewed access modes. These access modes are outlined below, or please contact us and we'll be able to advise you on the best approach for your project.

Responses to some frequently asked questions can be found here or we'd be happy to talk to you further by e-mail or phone on +44 (0)1235 778797.

Up to 10% of the available experiment time at Diamond is set aside for proprietary access, the most popular choice for our industrial partners.

Experiment time is scheduled regularly throughout the year and then available to our industrial partners on a first-come first-served basis. There is a fee for time used and services provided. The work is performed under contract guaranteeing complete confidentiality as the results are available only to the customer.

The Industrial Liaison team acts as the main point of contact for our industrial partners and can offer a range of services including a mail-in data collection and full experimental design, data collection and analysis service. Our flexible approach means that we can prepare a tailored package for you depending on the needs of each of your projects and we charge only for the time and services you actually need. Government funding streams may also prove helpful; previous industrial partners have attracted TSB funding for their project with Diamond.

Some of our partners prefer to perform their own experiments and simply obtain access to the instruments with some technical support, some prefer to send us their samples for a full analysis service and others would like to participate in the experiments to varying degrees. Remote access is also available for some techniques.

Please talk to us about what would work best for you and your project. 

The majority of the experiment time available at Diamond is awarded through a competitive peer review process.

Industrial scientists are very welcome to apply for experiment time (known as beamtime) through this route for their own basic research or in collaboration with an academic institution. The results must be published in the public domain. There will be no charge made to an industrial user awarded beamtime through this access mechanism.

Please note that there is no guarantee that proposals will be successful and the experiment proposers will be expected to perform the experiments and analyse their own data. Additional scientific support may be available by collaboration with Diamond staff.

Calls for proposals are issued on the Diamond website twice a year. Proposals are peer reviewed (with the quality of the proposed science being the main factor) and then prioritised against other proposals before the subsequent awarding of beamtime.

The Industrial Liaison Office offers free scientific consultancy and we can help you decide which experiments would best help you answer your questions. Further information on proposal formats and submission deadlines is available from the User Office but for any other enquiries, please contact us.