Scientists have figured out how to make tiny diamond sensors work better inside living cells—using an idea borrowed from high-definition television technology.
This breakthrough could one day help detect diseases like cancer at their earliest stages by tracking cellular changes in real time.
Diamond may not be the first thing you think of when it comes to medical tools, but at the microscopic level, diamond particles can host quantum sensors—devices so sensitive they can detect tiny changes in magnetic or electric fields.
These properties make them incredibly useful for studying what’s happening inside a single cell. But there’s been one big problem: shrinking diamonds small enough to enter a cell significantly weakens their quantum performance.
Uri Zvi, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, decided to tackle this issue.
Along with colleagues from UChicago and the University of Iowa, Zvi helped develop a new way to protect and enhance diamond nanoparticles by coating them in a special shell inspired by quantum dot LED (QLED) TVs.
Quantum sensors work well in larger diamond pieces, but once the diamonds are small enough to slip inside a living cell, their quantum properties degrade.
It was a mystery researchers had been struggling with for years. Zvi noticed that early quantum dots—tiny particles used in modern TVs to create bright colors—also had performance issues.
Scientists solved this in TVs by wrapping the quantum dots in specially designed shells that kept their surfaces stable.
Zvi and his team wondered if they could do the same for diamond nanoparticles. But since their sensors were meant for use in living tissue, the shell needed to be both biologically friendly and effective at improving performance.
That’s where immunoengineering professor Aaron Esser-Kahn stepped in, helping the team design a silicon-oxygen (siloxane) shell. This material doesn’t trigger the body’s immune system and instead allows cells to absorb the particle more naturally.
When the team tested their coated nanodiamonds, the results were far better than they expected. The diamonds’ quantum signal lasted up to four times longer, making the sensors more reliable and sensitive. Their brightness also nearly doubled, and their charge stability improved. This wasn’t just a small upgrade—it pointed to something much deeper.
Working with theoretical physicists from the University of Iowa, the researchers discovered that the shell was actually changing the electronic behavior inside the diamond itself.
It was pulling electrons away from the diamond’s surface—removing the very things that usually disrupt quantum coherence. This gave scientists a new understanding of how surface chemistry can be used to control quantum behavior.
Not only does this advance make quantum sensors more effective for biomedical use, but it also solves a long-standing mystery in the field of quantum materials. Now, researchers can better design nanoparticles with customized properties for specific scientific and medical applications.
Zvi summed it up best: this discovery isn’t just about making a better sensor—it’s about opening a new way to think about building and controlling quantum systems at the smallest scales.
What started as a problem in quantum sensing has now led to a deeper understanding of how to engineer the quantum world, one atom at a time.
