Nanodiamonds from Bottle Plastic

Dear readers,

What is going on in the center of planets like Neptune and Uranus? To find out, an international team headed by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) , the Universit?t Rostock and France’s école Polytechnique conducted a novel experiment. They fired a laser at a thin film of simple #PET plastic and investigated what happened using intensive laser flashes.

One result was that the researchers were able to confirm their earlier thesis that it does rain diamonds inside the ice giants at the periphery of our solar system. And another was that this method could establish a new way of producing nanodiamonds.

In addition to this rather fundamental knowledge, the new experiment also opens up perspectives for a technical application: the tailored production of nanometer-sized diamonds, which are already included in abrasives and polishing agents. In the future, they are supposed to be used as highly-sensitive quantum sensors, medical contrast agents and efficient reaction accelerators, for splitting CO2 for example.

Kind regards

Melanie Ehrhardt, editor Kunststoffe international

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