How diamond nanoparticles could be the trick for clothes that keep you cool in extreme heat

On a hot day, most clothing traps heat. But fabric coated with nanodiamonds—tiny diamond particles—can instead release heat, helping cut energy use for air-conditioning. The diamond nanoparticles, each less than one-thousandth of the width of a human hair, have the same carbon crystal structure as larger diamonds. But since they don’t have to be perfectly formed and can be made from carbon waste such as plastic, they are relatively inexpensive to make. The structure means that they’re especially effective at moving heat. “Because carbon has exceptional thermal properties, it can absorb energy and heat quickly, and it can dispense it quickly through that system,” says Shadi Houshyar, an engineering professor at Australia’s RMIT University, whose team developed nanodiamond-coated fabric in the university’s Centre for Materials Innovation and Future Fashion. Diamonds are already used in electronics to help keep parts like computer chips cool. The researchers realized that they could use t