Molecular-sized fluorescent nanodiamonds

• Published in: Nature nanotechnology Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 54 - 58
• Main Authors: Vlasov, Igor I., Shiryaev, Andrey A., Rendler, Torsten, Steinert, Steffen, Lee, Sang-Yun, Antonov, Denis, Vörös, Márton, Jelezko, Fedor, Fisenko, Anatolii V., Semjonova, Lubov F., Biskupek, Johannes, Kaiser, Ute, Lebedev, Oleg I., Sildos, Ilmo, Hemmer, Philip. R., Konov, Vitaly I., Gali, Adam, Wrachtrup, Jörg
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.01.2014; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/624/399/1096; Carbon; Chemistry; Color centers; Defects; Diamonds; Doping; Electrons; Emissions; Fluorescence; Impurities; letter; Materials Science; Microscopy; Nanoparticles; Nanostructure; Nanotechnology; Nanotechnology and Microengineering; Optics; Physics; Quantum chemistry; Quantum dots; Silicon; Hungary; United States > US; Texas; Germany; Russia
• ISSN: 1748-3387; 1748-3395
• DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2013.255

Doping of carbon nanoparticles with impurity atoms is central to their application 1 , 2 . However, doping has proven elusive for very small carbon nanoparticles because of their limited availability and a lack of fundamental understanding of impurity stability in such nanostructures 3 . Here, we show that isolated diamond nanoparticles as small as 1.6 nm, comprising only ∼400 carbon atoms, are capable of housing stable photoluminescent colour centres, namely the silicon vacancy (SiV) 4 , 5 . Surprisingly, fluorescence from SiVs is stable over time, and few or only single colour centres are found per nanocrystal. We also observe size-dependent SiV emission supported by quantum-chemical simulation of SiV energy levels in small nanodiamonds. Our work opens the way to investigating the physics and chemistry of molecular-sized cubic carbon clusters and promises the application of ultrasmall non-perturbative fluorescent nanoparticles as markers in microscopy and sensing. Diamond nanoparticles containing only about 400 atoms emit bright fluorescence due to silicon vacancy defects.