Covalent incorporation of aminated nanodiamond into an epoxy polymer network

Outstanding mechanical and optical properties of diamond nanoparticles in combination with their biocompatibility have recently attracted much attention. Modification of the surface chemistry and incorporation into a polymer is required in many applications of the nanodiamond. Nanodiamond powder with reactive amino groups (∼20% of the number of surface carbon atoms in each 5 nm particle) was produced in this work by covalent linking of ethylenediamine to the surface carboxyl groups via amide bonds. The synthesized material was reacted with epoxy resin, yielding a composite, in which nanodiamond particles are covalently incorporated into the polymer matrix. The effect of amino groups grafted on the nanodiamond on the curing chemistry of the epoxy resin was analyzed and taken into consideration. Covalently bonded nanodiamond-epoxy composites showed a three times higher hardness, 50% higher Young's modulus, and two times lower creep compared to the composites in which the nanodiamond was not chemically linked to the matrix. Aminated nanodiamond produced and characterized in the present study may also find applications beyond the composites, for example, as a drug, protein, and gene delivery platform in biology and medicine, as a solid support in chromatography and separation science, and in solid state peptide synthesis.