title: Understanding ultrafine nanodiamond formation using nanostructured explosives.
abstract: The detonation process is able to build new materials with a bottom-up approach. Diamond, the hardest material on earth, can be synthesized in this way. This unconventional synthesis route is possible due to the presence of carbon inside the high-explosive molecules: firing high-explosive mixtures with a negative oxygen balance in a non-oxidative environment leads to the formation of nanodiamond particles. Trinitrotoluene (TNT) and hexogen (RDX) are the explosives primarily used to synthesize nanodiamonds. Here we show that the use of nanostructured explosive charges leads to the formation of smaller detonation nanodiamonds, and it also provides new understanding of nanodiamond formation-mechanisms. The discontinuity of the explosive at the nanoscale level plays the key role in modifying the diamond particle size, and therefore varying the size with microstructured charges is impossible.
authors.affiliation: NS3E «Nanomatériaux pour les Systèmes Sous Sollicitations Extrêmes» UMR ISL-CNRS-UDS 3208, French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis, 5 Rue du Général Cassagnou, 68301 Saint-Louis, France.
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Pichot
authors.forename: Benedikt
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Risse
authors.forename: Fabien
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schnell
authors.forename: Julien
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mory
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Spitzer