Just in time for Christmas: gold-nanoparticle jewellery

(Nanowerk News) The Centre for NanoBioSafety and Sustainability (CNBSS) organised the premiere of Gold Light, the first quantum jewellery product, last week at the Hotel Mercer, in Barcelona. Gold Light is the fruit of a collaboration that combines Barcelona’s long artisanal tradition with Nanotechnology developed by Institut Català de Nanotecnologia (ICN)’s Inorganic Nanoparticles Group. Gold Light is an extraordinary jewellery product, unique for both its innovation and its aesthetics.
Gold Light quantum jewels
Gold Light quantum jewels.
A multidisciplinary team, including jewellery designer Roberto Carrascosa, artist Joan Peris, production designer Francesc Oliveras, and art business manager Jose Luis Fettolini, developed Gold Light over the course of a year, based on specialist knowledge from the Inorganic Nanoparticles Group.
The final product exploits the aesthetic potential of noble-metal nanoparticles and their special interaction with light. Jewellers traditionally work with precious metals, which in their smallest form exist as nanoparticles(at smaller sizes, metal particles lose their metallic properties).
Gold Light, composed of gold nanoparticles, represents the advent of quantum jewellery, where quantum is used in the literal sense. Their work on Gold Light has also served as a case model for the CNBSS to evaluate the regulatory mechanisms and corporate obligations for the development and marketing of a product that contains nanoparticles. For the CNBSS, the venture served as a study in the safety-by-design of a nanoproduct, through advice from attorney Ignasi Gispert.
The ICN and Leitat Technological Center have contributed, via the CNBSS, to promoting the safe use of Nanotechnology-based solutions in strategic sectors, through educational and outreach programmes, industrial collaborations and services, and by supporting the launching of spin-offs. Although much of CNBSS’s applied research is focused on areas like Medicine, Cosmetics, Industrial Processes and the implications of Nanotechnology for worker and consumer safety, its work has the potential to impact a far broader array of sectors. In this context, the ICN’s Inorganic Nanoparticles Group and the CNBSS were able to collaborate in the field of Artistic Design, for which Barcelona’s role as a world capital of design and innovation is especially important.
Source: Institut Català de Nanotecnologia