What do luxury diamonds, cutting-edge quantum physics, and the QLED screen in your TV have in common? Surprisingly, when combined, they form the foundation of a groundbreaking new technology that may one day detect diseases like cancer or diabetes—from inside your living cells.
This isn’t science fiction. It’s the latest innovation from researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa, who have developed a new way to turn ordinary diamond nanoparticles into quantum sensors capable of functioning inside biological environments. Their work could redefine early disease detection, cellular diagnostics, and real-time health monitoring.
Diamonds contain special flaws called nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers—tiny imperfections that make them extremely sensitive to temperature, electric fields, and magnetic signals. For years, scientists have explored using these defects as quantum sensors to monitor molecular activity inside living systems.
However, there’s a catch: to be used in biological cells, diamonds must be shrunk down to nanometer sizes—less than 100 nanometers wide. At that scale, the NV centers lose their quantum properties. Their signals weaken, and their ability to sense changes in the environment degrades. Despite many attempts—polishing the surfaces, changing shapes, or adjusting the internal structure—nanodiamonds just didn’t work as reliable sensors inside cells.
“People have used diamond nanocrystals as biosensors before, but they discovered that they perform worse than what we would expect. Significantly worse,” explained Uri Zvi, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago.
The breakthrough came from an unexpected place: QLED television screens. These displays use quantum dots, tiny light-emitting particles that are coated in protective shells to preserve their brightness and stability over time.
The research team applied a similar approach to nanodiamonds. They designed a core-shell structure, placing a silica coating around the diamond core. Silica is not only chemically stable and biocompatible but also easy to manipulate. By fine-tuning the shell’s thickness and its chemical bonds with the diamond, the team was able to protect the NV centers from surface damage and environmental interference.
The results were striking. The coated nanodiamonds delivered 1.8 times stronger quantum signals than uncoated versions and, crucially, retained their performance inside living cells. Under a microscope, scientists could read clean, stable quantum signals from within the cellular environment—something previously impossible with nanodiamonds.
“This work provides a foundational advancement in nanoscale quantum sensing, with implications for precision diagnostics, cellular imaging, and other bioengineering applications,” the team wrote in their report.
As Zvi summed it up: “The end impact is not just a better sensor, but a new, quantitative framework for engineering coherence and charge stability in quantum nanomaterials.”
This new technology could one day enable doctors to track diseases from the inside out, detecting early biochemical changes before symptoms appear. It may also allow researchers to monitor how individual cells respond to treatments in real time.
By borrowing strategies from consumer electronics and applying them to quantum materials, scientists have taken a major step toward turning nanodiamonds into real-time, in vivo health sensors—and possibly bringing quantum medicineinto everyday clinical use.
By Impact Lab
