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Date posted
Funding Agency
(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy)
Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Berkeley National Laboratory; the University of California, Berkeley; and Adamas Nanotechnologies Inc. in Raleigh, NC, have encased nanodiamonds – diamonds that are less than 100 nanometers in size – in tiny moving droplets of water to improve quantum sensing, a technology that uses quantum mechanics to measure physical quantities with high precision. As the droplets flowed past a laser and were hit by microwaves, the nanodiamonds gave off light. The amount of light in the presence of a microwave field was related to the materials around the nanodiamond, letting scientists determine whether a chemical of interest was nearby.
