How Tiny Nanodiamonds are Creating Huge Innovations in Biomedical Technologies

So, my name is Olga Shenderova I am CEO of Adámas Nanotechnologies. So what we do at Adámas we break diamonds to nanodiamonds. 

So, we do very heavy processing in Adámas. We have milling machines; we have centrifuges to have these narrow size particles; we have chemical hoods; we run a lot of different surface reactions; we produce about a dozen of different diamond surface functionalization uniquely tailored for specific applications. We have very extensive characterization capabilities to measure particle size, colloidal properties and also, we are very proud that we recently built our quantum characterization infrastructure at Adámas. We now can measure all major quantum characteristics of nanodiamond particles containing NV centers. So now our customers will get fully characterized quantum grade diamond products- all done in the US.

Diamond has spin state connected luminescence, nitrogen vacancy center it is very famous center in diamond because it has spin dependent luminescence. In turn spin states are highly sensitive to environment. Changes in environment they cause changes in spin state and those changes in spin state in turn cause changes in diamond luminescence. There are, I would say, a few hundred papers on quantum sensing in biomedical applications with fluorescent nanodiamonds. 

So, this yellow powder is typical abrasive 100 Micron size particles. They are yellow because they contain nitrogen. After we do electron irradiation of these diamond particles, they become greenish due to formation of so-called vacancies.  Electrons knock out carbon atoms from their sides and vacancies are formed. Due to their spectra they introduce and light absorption they introduce greenish color. And then we do high temperature annealing about 1000 centigrade and vacancies start to move and say find nitrogen atoms and form these so-called nitrogen vacancy centers which have these interesting quantum properties. So these particles are used in biomedical applications.

Also, diamond has high biocompatibility, so they are safe to be used in cell studies or in vivo studies with animals. They don’t introduce toxicity.

I can mention another application of detonation nanodiamonds in biomedical field. It is drug delivery applications. So since particles are tiny tiny just five nanometers they have huge surface area. So 1g of such particles have surface area of 400 square meters which is huge. And so, you can upload a lot of drugs on such a huge area right. So the beauty of diamond surface is a high electrostatic interaction of diamond surface sites and diamond surface groups, all these different drug molecules, so they can be attached that just electrostatically to nanodiamonds, delivered to a site of interest using targeted delivery and then they start slowly releasing the drugs.

Another very interesting application I would like not to forget to mention is MRI imaging. In this case we turn back now to florescence in diamonds containing NV centers. So, there is very interesting technology developed by scientists from UC Berkeley Ashok Ajoy group based on so-called hyperpolarization of C13 spin. So now we talk not about electron spins of NV centers but nuclear spins of C13 atoms in diamond like this. But still NV centers are required. It appears that by shining light on NV centers they become hyperpolarized. Hyperpolarization is alignment of spin in certain direction. As shifting spins become hyperpolarized, they become highly visible in C13 MRI imaging. So, diamonds hyperpolarize optically hyperpolarized diamond can become the contrast agents for MRI. As you shine light on them, they become visible in MRI.

I’m fascinated that there are scientists who form spin offs, and they try to solve some biomedical very challenging problems, and this is kind of a new era in applications of nanodiamonds. But within the last two years commercial applications became reality. So there are a few companies that have been formed within maybe one or two years, which focus on specific end use applications of quantum sensing of nanodiamonds. I would like to give 2 examples. One company is so-called QT Sense in the Netherlands. Another example where our nanodiamonds are used for quantum sensing application is a company called FeBi technologies in Australia that was started by David Simpson.

That company is focusing on very accurate detection of iron in our blood.