Katie and I went to an awesome P chem lecture at the ACS Conference in San Francisco. The researcher there talked about his research into fluorescent nanodiamonds as biomarkers. Isn't that cool! Apparently they're the least toxic carbon-based nanoparticles. They fed them to worms and could image the worms without affecting their life-span.
The color that the diamonds fluoresce at is determined by their nitrogen content, so the researchers form them under different conditions to get different fluorescing colors.
I'm always amazed at the wonderful things Chemistry is used for.
Sidenote: this is what Matt is planning on using to propose. He's going to get a wedding band and then epoxy some fluorescent nanodiamonds on since they're only about a dollar a carat. His line: Even though this doesn't sparkle in the sunlight baby, it fluoresces under UV light.
We'll see how that ends up working out.... good luck man.
such a good presentation! i seriously want to look more into this.
ReplyDelete