Meteoritic nanodiamond: a micro-Raman spectroscopical overview

Introduction: There are two hypotheses on the formation processes of the meteoritic nanodiamonds: (1) Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) and (2) Shock metamorphism. The purpose of this study is to investigate the crystalline background of the meteoritic nanodiamond from different meteorite separates and understand more about formation mechanism of these samples. This method is not only of great help in elucidating crystal structures, but can also be used as a method of qualitative analysis (finger print), e.g., in determining the phases of small thin section areas without destroying them. This tecnique is potentially useful for study of nanodiamonds.