Fluorescent Nanodiamonds Synthesized in One-Step by Pulsed Laser Ablation of Graphite in Liquid-Nitrogen

In this work, we present a relevant upgrade to the technique of pulsed laser ablation of fluorescent nanodiamonds (NDs), relying on an automatized graphite-target movement maintaining a constant level of liquid nitrogen over its surface during hours of deposition. Around 60 mg of NDs nanopowder was synthesized and optomagnetically characterized to assess its optical quality. Chemical purification of the ablated nanopowders, which removes the graphitic byproducts, permits to obtain pure fluorescent NDs with an efficiency of 7 ± 1% with respect to the total nanopowder mass. This value compares positively with the efficiency of other commercial NDs synthesis techniques such as detonation, cavitation, and high pressure–high temperature.