A quantitative version of the commutator theorem for zero trace matrices
  Let $A$ be a $m\times m$ complex matrix with zero trace and let $\e>0$. Then there are $m\times m$ matrices $B$ and $C$ such that $A=[B,C]$ and $\|B\|\|C\|\le K_\e m^\e\|A\|$ where $K_\e$ depends only on $\e$. Moreover, the matrix $B$ can be taken to be normal. 
William B. Johnson, Narutaka Ozawa, Gideon Schechtman
math.FA