Awarded to Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga, and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for creating diamonds from liquid — specifically from tequila.

Tequila would not appear on a standard laboratory’s inventory, and you have to wonder whether this Mexican team had put some to its typical use before deciding to make it part of their experiment.

In a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD), the scientists injected the beverage into a lowpressure chamber, where it reacted with silicon and steel surfaces to form thin diamond films. Such films are often manufactured for industrial applications, but their precursors are generally lower on alcohol content. The trouble with many other reactants, say Morales et al., is that it is tricky to get the element mix just right for ideal diamond formation.

Enter tequila. Tequila is basically just a mixture of water and ethanol (which, like other alcohols, contains carbon) with a few extra bits in. The hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon from the tequila seem to be in a nearly ideal ratio for diamond crystals to form.

Not only is tequila a viable source of diamond, the films it produces are actually better for some purposes than those formed by more standard methods. Regular CVD often produce unwanted byproducts, which reduce the quality of the resulting diamond. A chemical analysis of the compounds in the tequila-based films, on the other hand, shows that only pure, unadulterated diamond is formed.

This project is wonderful inspiration to all those suffering from leftover alcohol that they don't know what to do with (which is surely a common problem). Who knows – if tequila makes good diamonds, maybe your vodka will provide the key to making a Star Trek transporter!

Jesse Dunietz is on loan from MIT to Churchill College for the year. He studies computer science, and only pretends to understand chemistry.