Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Materialytics Gets Spotlight For Blood Diamond Detection

Killeen, Texas-based Materialytics, which has quietly developed technology which uses lasers to identify the origins of diamonds and other materials, is getting some notice for its technology this month--in the latest issue of National Geographic. The local startup, which is based on research originally from New Mexico State University, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and other institutions, is commercializing a way to determine exactly where diamonds and other materials are from, by shooting lasers into those materials and analyzing the light spectrum that comes back. National Geographic noted that the firm's technology might pave a way to prevent the sales of "blood diamonds"--diamonds mined from war zones, which have been used to fund weapons purchases and are associated with brutal conflicts worldwide.