A new study inspired by distant planets has successfully transformed a common type of plastic into tiny diamonds.
By using an ultra-powerful laser, scientists have made a breakthrough by converting inexpensive plastic into “nano diamonds”.
Scientists successfully transform plastic into diamonds using ultra-powerful lasers. (Illustrative image).
This discovery is inspired by the diamond rain that is believed to occur quite frequently on the giant icy planets of the Solar System, including Neptune and Uranus.
In a successful experiment, scientists took a sheet of polyethylene terephthalate (PET)—a common type found in plastic bottles—and used a high-powered optical laser to irradiate it.
Under the combined Linac light source, the plastic was burned at around 6,000 degrees Celsius and subjected to pressures over a million times greater than Earth’s atmospheric pressure in just a fraction of a second.
The result was that the carbon atoms within the plastic restructured into crystals, while hydrogen and oxygen were completely removed from the bonds.
Diamonds created from inexpensive plastic could change the perception of these materials. (Illustrative image).
It should be noted that carbon in crystalline form— or nano diamonds—is still quite different from the sparkling diamonds we typically see in jewelry stores. They are merely extremely small diamonds, measuring just a few nanometers, or one billionth of a meter.
In practical applications, this type of diamond is primarily used as ultra-small quantum sensors to measure temperature and magnetic fields.
Additionally, they offer potential applications such as converting carbon dioxide into less polluting gases or delivering drugs inside the body in the form of specialized “carriers.”
This new research could also help produce commercial diamonds of specific sizes, thereby transforming the mining industry for this precious mineral.
The new research could help create diamonds of specific sizes.
Alongside the formed carbon crystals, scientists also discovered a strange state of water, temporarily referred to as “superionic ice”, appearing in the experiment.
According to Dominik Kraus, a physicist at Dresden-Rossendorf (Germany), this unusual form of water allows protons to move through the atomic network of oxygen, potentially creating special magnetic fields.
By further investigating how these states exist, scientists will gain clearer insights into what is happening on some distant planets and assess whether diamond rain (or water) truly exists there.
