Qiao R, Boies A. Continuous gas-phase synthesis of iron nanoparticles at ambient conditions with controllable size and polydispersity.
J Colloid Interface Sci 2024;
658:986-996. [PMID:
38159359 DOI:
10.1016/j.jcis.2023.11.097]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/25/2023] [Revised: 11/14/2023] [Accepted: 11/16/2023] [Indexed: 01/03/2024]
Abstract
HYPOTHESIS
By altering aerosol growth dynamics with unipolar charges, one can obtain aerosols with narrow particles size distributions, a highly desirable feature in applications of functional nanoparticles.
EXPERIMENTS
Unlike liquid colloid systems, aerosol particles in the free molecular regime undergo coarsening due to Brownian coagulation and will eventually attain a self-preserving size distribution with a typical geometric standard deviation of 1.46 - 1.48. We developed a novel continuous one-step aerosol synthesis reactor that produces iron nanoparticles from ferrocene at ambient conditions, which confines the site of precursor breakdown and particle formation in the downstream vicinity of a positive corona discharge.
FINDINGS
We demonstrated that the particle size could be controlled within 3 - 10 nm with a suppressed geometric standard deviation (1.15 - 1.35). The as-produced iron nanoparticles were successfully used as catalyst for the growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes with a narrow diameter range. With a transient aerosol dynamics model, we showed that a fraction (as small as 0.1%) of unipolar-charged particles could have a significant impact on the aerosol growth dynamics, which eventually results in a narrower particle size distribution with smaller size and higher number concentrations.
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