Evidence of absorption dominating over scattering in light attenuation by nanodiamonds

Abstract

We show an experimental evidence of the domination of absorption over scattering in absorbance spectra of detonation nanodiamonds. We perform absorbance measurements on the UV-vis spectrophotometer equipped with an integrating sphere and compare them with conventional absorbance spectra. Additionally, we measure the scattering light intensity at the cuvette side wall (scattering at 90^{∘} angle). The obtained experimental data were interpreted using photon random-walk simulations in turbid media and the Kubelka-Munk approach. The scattering cross sections and indicatrices were obtained by Mie theory. We discover that despite being very close to the λ^{−4} power law (like Rayleigh scattering) the light extinction by the primary 4-nm diamond crystallites is due to absorption only and scattering can be neglected. That is the reason why previously absorption and scattering contributions were confused. The scattering is governed only by the agglomerates of 100 nm and larger in size remaining in the hydrosols and their fraction can be effectively controlled by centrifugation. Only Mie theory reproduces correctly the close to λ^{−2} scattering by the agglomerates accounting for the weird interplay between their size, fractal dimension, and dielectric properties. Finally, using the obtained absorbance spectra we estimate the fraction of nondiamond phase in nanodiamonds and their agglomerates.