Early stages of particle formation in high temperature aerosol reactors
Aerosol science and technology enable continual advances in material synthesis and atmospheric pollutant control. Among these advances, one important frontier is characterizing the initial stages of particle formation by real time measurement of particles below 2 nm in size. Sub 2 nm particles play important roles by acting as seeds for particle growth, ultimately determining the final properties of the generated particles. Tailoring nanoparticle properties requires a thorough understanding and precise control of the particle formation processes, which in turn requires characterizing nanoparticle formation from the initial stages. The knowledge on particle formation in early stages can also be applied in quantum dot synthesis and material doping. This project pursued two approaches in investigating incipient particle characterization in systems with aerosol formation and growth: (1) using a high-resolution differential mobility analyzer (DMA) to measure the size distributions of sub 2 nm particles generated from high-temperature aerosol reactors, and (2) analyzing the physical and chemical pathways of aerosol formation during combustion.
Combustion synthesis of functional nanoparticles for energy and environmental applications
Compared to conventional approaches for the manufacture of nanoparticles, gas-phase synthesis offers the advantages of high-throughput production, fast processing, and simplicity. Wide applications of these nanomaterials can be found in energy and environmental engineering, and new fields of nanomedicine and nanorobotics have emerged and are expected to flourish. Recent applications of gas-phase synthesized nanomaterials in energy conversion include solar cells, lithium batteries, CO2 photo-reduction, and catalytic combustion of volatile organic compounds. In these applications, the nanomaterials act as a medium for the transport of electrons and ions or as a catalyst promoting the reaction rates. Their properties are a strong function of their structures, and the successful application of gas-phase synthesis requires an adequate degree of tailoring and control of these structures. By controlling the synthesis method, temperature, composition, and reaction time, the structure of the nanomaterials can be fine-tuned for better performances in energy conversion applications. Modeling approaches are also developed to validate the synthesis techniques.
Funded projects:
Ultrafine Inorganic Particle Formation in Plasma-Assisted Combustion (PI, co-PI: Daoru Han (Missouri S&T), NSF: 2021-2024)
