A new study has finally uncovered the chemical mechanism behind how nanodiamonds can be easily coated with silica. How something theoretically pure carbon (nanodiamonds) could be covered with an “exotic” substance like silica, a common practice in science, has remained a complete mystery until now. It turns out that the impurities introduced during the process, namely ammonium hydroxide and ethanol, are the major ones.
alcohol coated diamonds
Nanodiamonds are synthetic diamonds that have been broken into pieces so small that the width of a human hair would take 40,000. Despite being theoretically perfect, these diamonds sometimes have a nitrogen atom replacing the carbon atom next to the missing carbon atom, which is technically a defect.