Diamonds are synthesized using advanced plasma-enhanced CVD technology, creating color centers like NV, SiV, GeV, Ni, and Cr by optimizing parameters such as gas mixture, substrate material, and solid additives. This process allows precise control over diamond characteristics, including size (0.1 to 300 µm), apex thickness (a few nanometers), and apex angle (~5°), with eight types of color centers for versatile applications.
FLORIN advances nanodiamond surface modification with non-thermal plasma, a method beyond the current state of the art. By introducing partially ionized gas into aqueous colloidal solutions, we optimized surface termination for quantum sensors. The plasma, produced from molecular hydrogen, led to increased O–H and C–H bonds, with significant changes in FTIR spectra. Zeta potential decreased notably, especially for oxidized NDs, and electron spin relaxation times for NV centers improved, with T1 times increasing by 17%–29% and T2 times prolonged by 40%.
We achieved coherent control of NV center-doped nanodiamonds in living cells, enabling intracellular thermodynamic accuracy within 100 mK. Theoretical research on blinking's impact on Fisher information found that the information per detected photon is greater with blinking emitters, and this information increases as the on-time ratio decreases, as seen in techniques like STORM and PALM. A parallelizable software tool for modeling emitter blinking was developed, and simulations revealed that a distribution with heavy tails reduces SOFI image informativeness.
Global market forecasts predict the micro- and nano-diamond market will exceed $370 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 19%. However, the biomedical market, including bioimaging and drug delivery, currently accounts for less than 1.8% of the total market due to a lack of suitable diamonds for functionalization. This presents a significant opportunity to commercialize the scalable production of CVD diamond micro- and nano-crystals and their biofunctionalization, enabling new biomedical applications.
