Boffins make diamonds from tequila

RESEARCHERS at a Mexican university have discovered that tequila can be turned into diamonds.

Scientists Javier Morales, Luis Apátiga and Victor Castaño were conducting experiments at the National Autonomous University of Mexico when they encountered tequila's surprising suitability for diamond formation out of curiousity.

They had been working on creating diamonds through a process involving organic solutions such as acetone, ethanol and methanol. They found that a solution with 40 per cent organic liquid in 60 per cent water was ideal for growing diamonds.

They noted that the ideal proportion of ethanol to water for creating diamonds was exactly the same as that of 80-proof tequila.

"To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," said Apátiga.

"We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."

The trio used a custom-built apparatus to grow diamond films using 'pulsed liquid injection chemical vapor deposition'.

In their device, they heated the tequila to 280 ºC (536 ºF) to change it into a gas. Then, in a hot reaction chamber, they heated the gas to 800 ºC (1470 ºF) to break down its molecular structure, yielding solid diamond crystals about 100-400nm in diameter.

The resulting diamond crystals fell onto silicon or stainless steel trays, building up into thin, uniform diamond films. The high temperatures used removed all of the impurities from the tequila to create diamonds.

The diamond films thus created are hard and heat-resistant -- properties that might make them useful as coatings for cutting tools, high-power semiconductors, radiation detectors and optical-electronic devices.

The researchers plan to start up industrial-scale applications around 2011, and they hope to find a tequila distiller interested in supplying an industrial endeavor with raw materials.

They're also working on creating diamonds doped with impurities for potential use as new types of semiconductors that can operate reliably at high temperatures. µ

L'Inqs
Physorg