High-yield fabrication and properties of 1.4?nm nanodiamonds with narrow size distribution

摘要

Detonation nanodiamonds (DNDs) with a typical size of 5?nm have attracted broad interest in science and technology. Further size reduction of DNDs would bring these nanoparticles to the molecular-size level and open new prospects for research and applications in various fields, ranging from quantum physics to biomedicine. Here we show a controllable size reduction of the DND mean size down to 1.4?nm without significant particle loss and with additional disintegration of DND core agglutinates by air annealing, leading to a significantly narrowed size distribution (±0.7?nm). This process is scalable to large quantities. Such molecular-sized DNDs keep their diamond structure and characteristic DND features as shown by Raman spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, STEM and EELS. The size of 1?nm is identified as a limit, below which the DNDs become amorphous.