Torr Scientific Limited is a family owned and run business. The founder is David Bates and his wife, Heather Bates.

Torr Scientific Limited is a family-owned business, founded by David and Heather Bates. David began his career as an apprentice at EEV (now called Teledyne), making image intensifiers (electron multipliers) in Chelmsford, where he met Heather.
He later worked as an engineer at ITL Vacuum and VG Scientific, specialising in development engineering for XPS X-ray monochromators. Over the years, David gained extensive experience in the field, ultimately working as a contractor Non-Standard Development Engineer for Edwards Vacuum.
With a background in Mechanical Engineering and expertise in electron optics, he eventually realised his vision of establishing his own company.

Torr Scientific was established in August 1998 in David’s garage, with one sputter coater and home‑built equipment. He provided thin film coating services for users and manufacturers of surface analysis X‑ray sources. He also coated vinyl records with gold. Once the company outgrew his garage, he moved it to a small industrial unit in Portslade, near Brighton in East Sussex, UK.

When Torr outgrew these premises they relocated to a modern factory in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex in August 2009.

As Torr Scientific continued to grow, David explored new opportunities for expansion. The company began designing and manufacturing anti‑reflective coatings for borosilicate glass viewports. Along the way, he noticed something important – there weren’t any fused silica viewports manufactured in the United Kingdom. Listening to our customers’ feedback, Torr Scientific saw a chance to fill this gap in the market. We started developing our own lead‑free vacuum brazing techniques. We also introduced new bonding methods and improved our anti‑reflective coatings to cover the entire spectrum, from ultraviolet to far infrared wavelengths.

In August 2009, Torr Scientific moved to a new, modern factory in Bexhill‑on‑Sea, East Sussex. The factory covered an area of 410 m². Then, in October 2011, we expanded by adding a 270 m² extension on the first floor. This increased floor space at the Sussex manufacturing site to a total of 680 m². At the same time the company invested in a new 110 m² cleanroom to provide a laboratory manufacturing facility in which thin‑film coatings and hermetic seals are processed, and UHV and optical instrumentation are assembled, inspected and packed. A second adjoining factory and cleanroom was built in 2015 expanding floor space to over 1200 m². Torr Scientific has now extended its vacuum window processing capabilities to include production of glass‑to‑metal seals.

Torr’s main products are vacuum viewports, anti-reflective coatings, quantum vacuum hardware and X-ray anodes. 

Following Torr’s successful introduction of our first viewport featuring laser-grade plano-plano optics, we expanded the product line to include new optical materials, such as sapphire, calcium fluoride, barium fluoride, magnesium fluoride and zinc selenide. Continuing our commitment to innovation and meeting customer needs, Torr Scientific introduced an even wider range of optical materials. These include potassium bromide, thallium bromide, borosilicate glass, silicon, germanium, AMTIR-1, zinc sulfide and more.  

After David found a gap in the UK market for AR coatings, Torr Scientific started providing a wide range of anti-reflective (AR) coatings for our vacuum viewports. This started with fused silica but is now available for many optic choices. Coatings help to improve the efficiency of light transmission and minimise reflections from the optics at a target wavelength.  

Following the beginning of the business focusing on coatings for X-ray sources and David’s interest in electron optics gained from his degree, the XEO (X-ray and Electron Optics) division at Torr Scientific was created. Today this includes our X-ray anode tip coatings and refurbishing; as well as our synchrotron and electron optical components such as phosphor screens, MCP assemblies and imaging detectors. Additionally, we both manufacture existing, and develop new anode assemblies for OEM (original equipment manufacturing) customers.  

Over the years the company has developed strong relationships with university departments, research laboratories and many industrial customers. Torr Scientific is a customer‑driven company, led by customer demand. We have many long‑running projects that we’ve developed from the ground up, advising, designing, manufacturing and testing bespoke items. Quantities vary from small batch size prototype quantities to many hundreds of parts for commercial production requirements. Torr Scientific’s expert knowledge allows us to manufacture bespoke products to meet scientific challenges, utilising specialised equipment with innovative features to fulfil our customers’ specific requirements.

Our core mission is to supply premium quality components and devices to big‑science institutions, university departments, research laboratories, R&D companies and OEM manufacturers. We continuously aspire to improve and optimise our processes by implementing new technologies, techniques and scientific developments. We are commited to provide continious training to our employees; doing so allows us to increase customer satisfaction, increase the number of returning customers and offer great customer value.

In recent years, we have supported many young people through their apprenticeships in subjects relevant to all areas of our business, including AAT Accounts, Customer Service, Engineering, Digital Marketing and Business Administration, with every one of them earning a full‑time role at the company upon the completion of their course. As of September 2024 over half of them are still at the company! Two of them hold managerial positions.