en.Wedoany.com Reported - An international research team led by Dr. Yingke Wu and Prof. Tanja Weil from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung) has developed a new bottom-up strategy for synthesizing nanodiamonds, enabling the direct construction of diamond-like, highly crystalline nanostructures from molecularly precise nanographene building blocks.
Nanodiamonds are tiny diamond particles only a few nanometers in size. Due to their chemical stability and ability to host optically active defects (i.e., color centers), they are considered highly promising materials for applications in quantum technology, sensing, and biomedical research. However, reliably producing nanodiamonds with uniform size, high purity, and targeted optical properties has previously been challenging.
The new method abandons the traditional approach of crushing larger diamonds, instead directly converting planar carbon molecules under high-pressure, high-temperature conditions. The key advantage of this bottom-up route lies in its controllability at the molecular level: since the structure, size, and composition of the starting molecules can be precisely defined, the properties of the resulting nanodiamonds are easier to tune. The team successfully produced extremely small and uniform nanodiamonds with sizes of approximately 3 to 4 nanometers.
Of particular importance, optically active color centers can be directly integrated into the diamond lattice during synthesis. Using suitable molecular precursors, silicon-based and germanium-based emitters can be generated without the need for subsequent ion implantation, irradiation, or other processing steps. This one-step direct synthesis yields fluorescent nanodiamonds with tailored optical properties.
"We believe this platform provides a scalable foundation for developing quantum sensors, integrated photon emitters, and programmable diamond-based nanomaterials," said Tanja Weil.
These novel molecular nanodiamonds open up prospects for quantum technology applications, such as serving as stable single-photon sources or nanoscale sensors. In the long term, they could also function as robust optical reporters for visualizing processes in cells or other biological environments at the smallest scales. The research findings from this international team have been published in the professional journal Nature.
Institutions involved in this study include the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY), Goethe University Frankfurt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, University of Cambridge, Saarland University, University of Göttingen, and Ulm University.
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