Paper NS-WeM12
Large Scale Production of Fluorescent Nanodiamond Particles

Wednesday, October 21, 2015, 11:40 am, Room 212B

Nanodiamond (ND) particles have recently emerged as a key platform for many sectors of nanoscience and nanotechnology due to their outstanding mechanical performance, biocompatibility and distinctive optical properties, a combination of assets not often met in the nanoworld. Particularly production of ND particles containing nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers exhibiting stable luminescence and unique spin properties have brought ND particles to the forefront of materials research. Based on the SBIR award from National Institute of Health (NIH), Adámas Nanotechnologies developed a large scale production of ND containing NV color centers in hundreds of grams batches. While nitrogen is an intrinsic impurity in diamond, vacancies must be created by high energy irradiation. Variety of factors play a role in creation of a high density ensemble of NV centers in NDs including density of substitutional nitrogen, size of starting particles that undergo irradiation, irradiation dose and temperature, post irradiation processing including fragmentation to the smaller sizes. In the paper, role of these factors will be discussed. Production of fractions of NDs with median sizes ranging between 10 and 100 nm was demonstrated, exceeding by an order of magnitude brightness of a relevant typically used organic dye for NDs with sizes exceeding 50nm. The brightness of fluorescent nanodiamonds and an organic dye was compared side-by-side under identical conditions using total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM) measurements at NIH.

Acknowledgment: Contract HHSN268201300030C, NHLBI COAC Services Branch RFP No. PHS 2013-1, Topic 80, “Fluorescent Nanodiamonds for In Vitro and In Vivo Biological Imaging”