One-Step Direct Amination of Nanodiamond Surface and Facile Separation by Viscosity Gradient Centrifugation
Abstract: The introduction of terminal amine functional group on nanodiamond (ND) surface has been proposed as the key strategy to enable further synthesis of various ND derivatives for a wide range of application including sensors and biomedicine. Nevertheless, it is still challenging to develop a successful synthesis procedure to achieve monodispersed ND-NH2 mostly due to the undesirable high agglomeration effect of ND particles and complex synthetic steps which dramatically limit their practical use. In this work, we demonstrate a facile approach to obtain the direct amination of the ND surface, through a one pot mechanochemical reaction using ball milling in the presence of NH4Cl. To obtain monodispersed ND-NH2, a straightforward process by virtue of viscosity gradient centrifugation is adopted using aqueous polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and glycerol. The results show a successful synthesis of ND-NH2 as evidenced by FT-IR and ζ–potential analysis. Moreover, the aminated ND particles morphology and size distribution analysis by TEM and DLS, respectively, show that using viscosity gradient built from aqueous PVP can achieve a better separation of NDs by size. Therefore, the findings suggested that the application of mechanochemical reactions and viscosity gradient centrifugation can be used to achieve homogeneous and monodispersed functionalized NDs for further specific technical applications.