Proton Beam Induced Fluorescence in 5 nm Detonation Nanodiamond

During the last few decades, nano-scale materials have achieved great success, providing applications in a wide variety of fields. In particular, a strong interest has been focused on the employment of nanoparticles as promising tools in biomedical research, diagnostics and therapy. Among the multitude of novel materials for this kind of applications, diamond nanocrystals (or nanodiamonds) earned a solid reputation and vast interest due to their excellent features, such as inertness, stability, fluorescence, non-toxicity, bio-compatibility and the possibility of modifying their surface termination. Typical nanodiamonds sizes range from 5 nm to 250 nm.