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The article to start this topic appeared in Interesting Engineering.
It describes (in layman's terms) a method of studying a sample of material by looking for red light emitted by damaged nanodiamonds.
"Damage" in this context means a Nitrogen atom is embedded in the structure in place of the Carbon atom that would normally be there.
https://interestingengineering.com/inno … um-sensing
Quantum sensing with nanodiamonds opens new frontiers in detection tech
Scientists have demonstrated the use use of microfluidic channels to enhance quantum sensing for chemical detection.Updated: Mar 07, 2025 08:32 AM EST
Photo of the Author Tejasri Gururaj
Tejasri Gururaj8 hours ago
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Quantum sensing with nanodiamonds opens new frontiers in detection tech
Researchers develop a new method from detecting trace chemicals using nanodiamonds embedded in microdroplets.Ajoy Lab/UC Berkeley
Quantum sensing is an innovative strategy for chemical detection that takes advantage of quantum properties at the smallest scales.
Defective single crystals, particularly diamonds, have traditionally been central to quantum sensing techniques. These methods encounter limitations, needing large diamond volumes or offering restricted sensitivity for trace chemical detection.
Now, researchers have proposed a new method that integrates quantum sensing with droplet microfluidics, a technology that uses tiny channels to control and manipulate droplets. This method strives to resolve issues encountered in traditional approaches.
“We weren’t even sure whether our technique would work, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy and effective. There are broad applications where these sensors could be deployed into interesting environments and help you find something that would usually be hard to detect,” said co-author of the study Ashok Ajoy, Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley, in a press release.
At the heart of this technology are nanodiamonds.
Diamond in the rough
Diamonds have a crystalline structure in which each carbon atom is covalently bonded to four others. This is what gives diamonds its unique properties, like its hardness and brilliance.The researchers used tiny diamonds or nanodiamonds having defects called nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. In simple terms, certain carbon atoms are absent in these diamonds and are replaced by nitrogen atoms.
This structure grants these nanodiamonds a unique property—when exposed to laser or microwave radiation, they emit red fluorescent light. This happens due to the electrons present in these defects or vacancies.
The amount of light emitted changes if other chemicals surround the nanodiamond, allowing researchers to detect specific chemicals. Therefore, the nanodiamonds can serve as quantum sensors.
Go with the flow
Their innovation lay in recognizing that this alone was not enough to achieve increased sensitivity and reduce the amount of nanodiamonds used.The researchers created nanodroplets, each a fraction of the width of human hair. The droplets contained the NV nanodiamonds along with the chemical to be detected, called the analyte.
This system was installed in a microfluidic device with microscopic channels that transport droplets to a detector.
The detector consists of lasers, microwave radiation, and a microscope objective to analyze the emitted light from the droplets.
What makes this approach particularly effective is the flowing droplets. The movement prevents noise in the measurements, arising as a result of the inconsistencies in the nanodiamonds when they are stationary.
Furthermore, their approach is scalable, thanks to the inexpensive nature of nanodiamonds.
Breaking new ground
The researchers used their setup to detect trace amounts of paramagnetic (slightly magnetic) chemicals.Researchers demonstrated that their system maintained consistent measurements while testing 100,000 droplets over more than 16 minutes.
Additionally, their method requires a minimal amount of nanodiamonds in volume, roughly the same amount as three to four teardrops, for an hour of analysis.
Their method successfully detected the presence of gadolinium ions and TEMPOL (a stable radical molecule) at very low concentrations.
Speaking of potential applications, the researchers mention the quantum sensor can be used to provide real-time data about what’s happening inside microorganisms to make self-regulating bioreactors possible.
The study is published in Science Advances.
I am on the watch for new discoveries that will ultimately provide an atom-by-atom sorting technique to deal with contaminated water.
Desalination is currently carried out by a variety of methods that deal with water as a bulk entity. What I'm watching for is a method of separating atoms (and molecules) on an individual basis. this "damaged diamond" identification technique is NOT that, but it ** is ** happening at the nanoscale, where the processes I'm looking for would occur.
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