Nanodiamonds are tiny diamond particles that usually measure mere millionths of a millimeter. They are extremely hard, stable, and heat-resistant and highly adaptable for various purposes in medicine, new materials, catalysis, and energy technology. By compressing plastic with lasers, researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of Rostock are now able to systematically produce high-purity, ultra-small diamonds of narrow size distribution. This is impossible to achieve with conventional methods such as explosions. As a scalable technology, laser compression offers great potential for improved, clean and sustainable production of ultra-small nanodiamonds.
When the researchers first created nanodiamonds using laser compression, their initial focus was on planetary physics. They fired high-power lasers at plastics, heating and compressing the material to simulate the extreme conditions inside planets such as Neptune or Uranus, where temperatures reach several thousand degrees Celsius under pressures that are millions of times higher than in the Earth’s atmosphere – ideal conditions for transforming carbon into diamonds.
Out of planetary physics into practical applications
“We did expect nanodiamonds to form under these conditions. What surprised us, however, was how quickly it happened, which immediately sparked the idea of a potential technical application,” says Dominik Kraus, founding director of the new HEDI – Institute of High Energy Density Physics at HZDR and professor at the University of Rostock. At the time, however, the scientists could only briefly demonstrate the formation of diamonds under these extreme conditions. The question whether they would survive a transition to normal pressure and temperatures has now been successfully demonstrated.
The experiments took place at the beamlines of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) south of Prague, a unique laser facility with a high repetition rate at very high energies. Three times per minute, the high-power laser at the L4n-P3 facility fires light pulses at a 100-micrometer-thin PET film, which is raster-scanned by the beam. Nanodiamonds form inside the shock wave and are then ejected from the film like projectiles and collected in a cylinder containing a catcher substance.
Manufacture by laser shock
Kraus describes the challenge as follows: “When the compression wave reaches the end of the sample, it abruptly enters a vacuum, accelerating the nanodiamonds to speeds of more than ten kilometers per second – comparable to a meteorite impact. To prevent the diamonds from immediate destruction upon impact with the collection cylinder, we need to use a very soft collection medium,” for which they chose a vacuum-compatible, water-soluble ionic gel.
Each shot fires approximately ten trillion nanometer-range diamonds of nearly the same size into the cylinder, which sounds like a lot, but yields very little mass. With an average diameter of three billionths of a meter, a single nanodiamond consists of about 3,000 carbon atoms. It took around 100 shots to obtain a few hundred micrograms of material: enough to detect and characterize the diamonds with the ELMI-MV electron microscope at the Department Life, Light, & Matter at the University of Rostock. “After extracting the nanodiamonds from the catcher material and purifying them, we were able to see them for the first time directly using the ELMI-MV. That was a special moment we had been working towards for years. With this instrument, we can even resolve individual atoms,” says Ben Heuser of HZDR, the study’s primary author who conducted the experiments as part of his doctoral thesis at the University of Rostock.
An optimized process for research and industry
Fusion research is driving new developments in energy-efficient, high-energy lasers at high repetition rates. This means that the process for producing nanodiamonds is likely to be truly scalable: The more high-energy pulses can be generated in a short time, the better the yield. In further experiments in their own laboratories at the University of Rostock and at large-scale research facilities, the researchers aim to increase production volume and reach the milligram range, a quantity similar to conventional production processes.
The key advantage of laser compression lies in its ability to produce smaller, cleaner, and more precisely controlled nanodiamonds, which are already being used in grinding and polishing agents today. In the future, they are expected to serve as highly sensitive quantum sensors, medical contrast agents and efficient reaction accelerators. For example, small diamonds offer various advantages in processes such as splitting CO₂ with sunlight, since their larger combined surface area enables a more efficient catalysis. When produced from plastic, they can be easily doped with foreign atoms and thus adapted for various purposes. This could, for example, improve contrast agents for medical MRI examinations.
Beyond nanodiamonds, the scientists want to use the process to create an exotic material: BC8, a form of carbon that had previously only been theoretically predicted. It is denser than a diamond, similarly hard, but less brittle. BC8 cannot form naturally on Earth because we lack the necessary conditions. Using high-power lasers and even higher pressure, the researchers now aim to produce this material directly from plastic, in a process similar to nanodiamond production. An initial experiment is planned for November.
Publication:
B. Heuser, P. Böhringer, K. Oldenburg, F.P. Condamine, G. Fauvel, M.-L. Herbert, J. Kuhkle, T. Laštovička, P. Luckmann, J. Lütgert, P.T. May, D. Ranjan, S. Schumacher, R. L. Singh, M. Stevenson, S. Weber, D. Kraus, Recovery of ultrasmall nanodiamonds from plastics shock-compressed to pressures around 100 GPa, in Diamond and Related Materials (2026) (DOI: 10.1016/j.diamond.2026.114091)
Further information:
Prof. Dominik Kraus
HEDI—Institute of High-Energy-Density Physics at HZDR / University of Rostock
Phone: +49 381 498 6930 | Email: d.kraus@hzdr.de
Media Contact:
Simon Schmitt | Head
Communications and Media Relations at HZDR
Phone: +49 351 260 3400 | Email: s.schmitt@hzdr.de
Lea-Marie Kenzler | Press Officer
Press and Communication Office at University of Rostock
Phone: +49 381 498 1029 | Email: lea-marie.kenzler@uni-rostock.de
The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) performs – as an independent German research center – research in the fields of energy, health, and matter. We focus on answering the following questions:
To help answer these research questions, HZDR operates large-scale facilities, which are also used by visiting researchers: the Ion Beam Center, the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the ELBE Center for High-Power Radiation Sources. HZDR is a member of the Helmholtz Association and has seven sites (Dresden, Freiberg, Görlitz, Grenoble, Leipzig, Rostock, Schenefeld near Hamburg) with almost 1,500 members of staff, of whom about 700 are scientists, including 200 Ph.D. candidates.
Diamond and Related Materials
Experimental study
Not applicable
Recovery of ultrasmall nanodiamonds from plastics shock-compressed to pressures around 100 GPa
25-Aug-2026