title: Toward deep blue nano hope diamonds: heavily boron-doped diamond nanoparticles.
abstract: The production of boron-doped diamond nanoparticles enables the application of this material for a broad range of fields, such as electrochemistry, thermal management, and fundamental superconductivity research. Here we present the production of highly boron-doped diamond nanoparticles using boron-doped CVD diamond films as a starting material. In a multistep milling process followed by purification and surface oxidation we obtained diamond nanoparticles of 10-60 nm with a boron content of approximately 2.3 × 10(21) cm(-3). Aberration-corrected HRTEM reveals the presence of defects within individual diamond grains, as well as a very thin nondiamond carbon layer at the particle surface. The boron K-edge electron energy-loss near-edge fine structure demonstrates that the B atoms are tetrahedrally embedded into the diamond lattice. The boron-doped diamond nanoparticles have been used to nucleate growth of a boron-doped diamond film by CVD that does not contain an insulating seeding layer.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Organische Chemie, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg , Am Hubland, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Steffen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Heyer
authors.forename: Wiebke
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Janssen
authors.forename: Stuart
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.forename: Ying-Gang
authors.initials: YG
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Weng Siang
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Yeap
authors.forename: Jo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Verbeeck
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Haenen
authors.forename: Anke
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Krueger