ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses a more recent alternative approach for the synthesis of diamondoids. Both electric discharge and pulsed laser plasmas generated in supercritical fluids (SCFs) allow the synthesis of diamondoids. However, one disadvantage of the use of these types of plasmas is the necessity to use specialized high-pressure equipment. The chapter introduces a recent alternative approach, which is based on the use of microplasma reactors that are operated at atmospheric pressure. It provides short overview of the results, after a brief review of atmospheric-pressure microplasma sources. As an alternative to high-pressure microfluidic microplasmas, an atmospheric-pressure continuous-flow process using dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma microreactors for the synthesis of diamondoids was developed. The chapter provides a brief overview of atmospheric-pressure microplasma reactors that were used for the synthesis of metallic nanoparticles and nanodiamonds, before introducing the microreactor system used for the synthesis of diamondoids.
