Size decrease of detonation nanodiamonds by air annealing investigated by AFM

0470564 - FZÚ 2017 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Stehlík, Štěpán - Miliaieva, Daria - Varga, Marián - Kromka, Alexander - Rezek, Bohuslav
Size decrease of detonation nanodiamonds by air annealing investigated by AFM.
MRS Advances. Roč. 1, č. 16 (2016), s. 1067-1073. ISSN 2059-8521
R&D Projects: GA ČR GA15-01809S
Institutional support: RVO:68378271
Keywords : nanodiamonds * annealing * atomic force microscopy
Subject RIV: BM - Solid Matter Physics ; Magnetism

Nanodiamonds represent a novel nanomaterial applicable from biomedicine to spintronics. Here we study ability of air annealing to further decrease the typical 5 nm NDs produced by detonation synthesis. We use AFM with sub-nm resolution to directly measure individual detonation nanodiamonds on a flat Si substrate. By means of particle analysis we obtain their accurate and statistically relevant size distributions. Using this approach, we characterize evolution of the size distribution as a function of time and annealing temperature: i) at constant time (25 min) with changing temperature (480, 490, 500°C) and ii) at constant temperature (490°C) with changing time (10, 25, 50 min). We show that the mean size of DNDs can be controllably reduced from 4.5 nm to 1.8 nm without noticeable particle loss and down to 1.3 nm with 36% yield. By air annealing the size distribution changes from Gaussian to lognormal with a steep edge around 1 nm, indicating instability of DNDs below 1 nm.

Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0268167