A Nanodiamond is forever. At least, in terms of fluorescence signal, they are. Fluorescent nanodiamonds never photobleach or blink.
Bikanta's nanodiamonds are differentiated by coatings that stabilize the particles to withstand a range of conditions. Rather than having the typical unreactive surface, they can be tightly bound to any targeting agent (e.g. aptamers, antibodies, polymers) and can therefore be tailored to detect specific diseases.
These nanodiamonds derive their fluorescence properties from negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV¯) centers, a color center or defect in the diamond lattice consisting of a substitutional nitrogen and a neighboring lattice vacancy. They are fluorescent sources with remarkable optical properties including:
quantum efficiency near unity
indefinite photo-stability (no photo-bleaching or blinking)
broad excitation spectra
exquisitely sensitive magnetic field modulation of fluorescence emission
long fluorescence lifetimes (~17ns)
