Development of sheet-like dielectric barrier discharge microplasma generated in supercritical fluids and its application to the synthesis of carbon nanomaterials

A two-dimensional, sheet-like dielectric barrier discharge microplasma that can be generated in supercritical fluids was developed. With this type of plasma, generated in supercritical xenon, nanocrystalline diamonds and diamondoid-like sp³ bonded nano-hydrocarbons were synthesized by using adamantane as a precursor and seed. Pressure and temperature were set close to the critical point of xenon at 6.3 MPa and 290.2 K, respectively. The peak-to-peak voltage for microplasma generation was between 3.4 and 7.1 kV, at a frequency of 10 kHz and the power consumption of the microplasma determined from the I-V measurements reached about 30 mW. Transmission electron microscopy analysis of the lattice of the synthesized particles revealed crystal structures similar to those observed in nanodiamonds, while micro-Raman spectra yielded features also found in Raman and ab initio computational studies of diamondoids.