Scientists are excited about diamonds—not the types that adorn jewelry, but the microscopic variety that are less than the width of a human hair. These so-called “nanodiamonds” are made up almost entirely of carbon. But by introducing other elements into the nanodiamond’s crystal lattice—a method known as “doping”—researchers could produce traits useful in medical research, computation and beyond.
In a paper published May 3 in Science Advances, researchers at the University of Washington, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory announced that they can use extremely high pressure and temperature to dope nanodiamonds. The team used this approach to dope nanodiamonds with silicon, causing the diamonds to glow a deep red—a property that would make them useful for cell and tissue imaging.
The team discovered that their method could also dope nanodiamonds with argon, a noble gas and nonreactive element related to helium found in balloons. Nanodiamonds doped with such elements could be applied to quantum information science—a rapidly expanding field that includes quantum communication and quantum computing.
“Our approach lets us intentionally dope other elements within diamond nanocrystals by carefully selecting the molecular starting materials used during their synthesis,” said corresponding author Peter Pauzauskie, a UW associate professor of materials science and engineering and researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
There are other methods to dope nanodiamonds, such as ion implantation, but this process often damages the crystal structure and the introduced elements are placed randomly, which limits performance and applications. Here, the researchers decided not to dope the nanodiamonds after they had been synthesized. Instead, they doped the molecular ingredients to make nanodiamonds with the element they wanted to introduce, then used high temperature and pressure to synthesize nanodiamonds with the included elements.
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