Researchers have announced a significant advancement in the production of quantum nanodiamonds, which are particles smaller than a virus and have broad applications in research and technology. This cutting-edge approach allows for the batch production of engineered, more uniform quantum nanodiamonds. This advance will dramatically reduce costs and revolutionize medical diagnostics and many other technological areas.
The innovative manufacturing method uses an ultra-fast one-step process with extreme conditions of temperature and pressure. This technique results in a cleaner restoration of the diamond lattice and increased stability of the quantum nanodiamonds’ charge state. Their enhanced nanodiamonds contained nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers that acted as highly sensitive biosensors. These sensors, which are capable of measuring magnetic fields, electron charge or temperature, serve as a necessary foundation for breakthrough diagnostics.
Previously, making these quantum nanodiamonds took weeks, needing to be irradiated with charged particles and then subjected to high-temperature annealing. With the new tactic, they’ve accelerated this process by more than a thousandfold. Consequently, scientists from UCLA and other universities can now manufacture kilograms of usable nanodiamonds in a single week. This innovation could help radically displace traditional approaches that would otherwise take more than four decades to yield the same.
Dr. Michal Gulka, an emerging researcher in the field and one of the scientists who made this accomplishment possible, expressed how important this step is.
“We’ve accelerated the creation of quantum centers in nanodiamonds more than a thousandfold compared with the standard procedure. Until now, diamond powder had to be irradiated with a beam of charged particles for two weeks and then annealed at high temperature. The result was less than a gram of usable material. We can now produce it in kilograms,” – Dr. Michal Gulka.
The novel approach leads to the creation of quantum nanodiamonds laced with red-emitting NV centers and green-emitting H3 centers. When excited with light, the fluorescent NV centers can be detected optically. In addition, they serve as ultra-sensitive sensors, creating new frontiers of fun such as detection for biomedical research or environmental monitoring.
In doing so, Dr. Cígler emphasized the far-reaching laboratory and commercial impact of this breakthrough around the world.
“Thanks to the new method, laboratories and companies around the world can obtain large quantities of high-quality nanodiamonds with NV centers, which opens the door to new technologies—from precision sensors for medical diagnostics to local molecular detectors based on principles such as magnetic resonance,” – Dr. Cígler.