By Hamish Johnston

I spent an hour or so this morning trawling through the arXiv preprint server, where many physicists post their research results before they are published formally. It’s a great way to keep up with the latest breakthroughs — and a good source of more controversial or off-beat stories.

That’s where I spotted this gem: “Growth of Diamond Films from Tequila” by Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga and Victor M Castaño, who are physicists based in (you guessed it) Mexico.

It seems that the three physicists have used the famous spirit in their chemical vapour deposition (CVD) machine to create tiny diamonds.

Although the paper notes that diamonds have already been made by CVD using a number of other precursors, the trio suggest that tequila provides “an excellent alternative to produce industrial-scale diamond thin films for practical applications using low-cost precursors”.

It’s not clear from the paper why tequila was used rather than vodka, gin or whisky — and of course, if this paper was entitled “Growth of Diamond Films from Water and Ethanol”, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.