Deagglomeration of polycrystalline diamond synthesized from graphite by shock-compression

Abstract

One of the industrially scalable methods for the synthesis of diamond crystals is shock compression of graphite. The method includes shock compression of graphite with explosives (RDX). Typical sizes of polycrystalline diamond particles produced by the method are in the range from 50 nm to 2 μm. We submit a method for deagglomeration of that diamond particles and production of stable hydrosol of monodisperse particles with positive electrokinetic potential. The mean size of isolated diamond particles in the hydrosol is 4 nm. The method includes chemical purification of the commercial diamond powder, annealing of purified powder in hydrogen, and followed centrifugation.

Keywords:

• Nanodiamond
• shock-compression
• deagglomeration process

Acknowledgments

Authors thank to A.Ya.Vul for fruitful discussion and support of this research. A.E. Aleksenskii and A.V. Shvidchenko thank the Russian Foundation for Basic Research for its support (grant 18-29-19125 MK “Effect of sp²−sp³ rehybridization of carbon on surface of nanodiamond on electronic and optical properties”). X-ray diffraction patterns were obtained on the equipment of the Engineering Center of St. Petersburg State Institute of Technology. TEM measurements were performed using equipment owned by the Joint Research Center “Material science and characterization in advanced technology” (Ioffe Institute, St.-Petersburg, Russia).