New Technology: A New Way To Produce Nano Diamond From Plastic Bottle

To find out, an international team led by the Dresden rosendoff Helmholtz Center (hzdr), the University of Rostock and the Federal Institute of technology in France conducted a novel experiment to confirm their earlier view that "Diamond rain" does occur in ice giants outside the solar system. At the same time, the experiment also found a new way to produce nano diamonds. The results were published in the latest issue of the journal progress in science.

The temperature inside the ice giant planets such as Neptune and Uranus is very high, reaching several thousand degrees Celsius, and the pressure is millions of times that of the earth's atmosphere. Ice giants contain not only carbon and hydrogen, but also large amounts of oxygen. The researchers found that the pet resin used to make ordinary plastic bottles has a good balance of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, simulating the activity on ice giants.

In the experiment, the researchers simulated the interior of the ice giant: a simple PET plastic sheet was irradiated by a powerful laser, which instantly heated it to 6000 ℃, and produced a shock wave up to 1 million times atmospheric pressure, compressing the material in a few nanoseconds. The researchers found that this extreme pressure produces tiny diamonds, known as nanodiamonds.

The team used a linear accelerator coherent light source (LCLs) X-ray laser to analyze what happens when a strong laser hits a PET film, whether nanodiamonds are produced, and the speed and size of diamond growth.

Dominic Klaus, a hzdr physicist and professor at Rostock University, said: "the role of oxygen is to accelerate the decomposition of carbon and hydrogen and promote the formation of nano diamonds, which means that carbon atoms are easier to combine to form diamonds." This further supports the assumption that diamonds will really rain on the ice giant. This phenomenon may exist not only in Uranus and Neptune, but also in countless other planets in the Milky way.

A supermagnetic field that the team would also find useful in creating a supermagnetic field for diamonds: water should help. But they have not yet been able to confirm in their experiments the presence of superionic water in the diamond mixture.

In addition to confirming earlier discoveries, the new experiment opens up the prospect of custom-made nano diamonds. This kind of diamond can be used in abrasives and polishing agents. In the future, it can also be used in high-sensitivity quantum sensors, medical contrast agents and high-efficiency reaction accelerators.