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Nanoparticle mixing through rapid expansion of high pressure and supercritical suspensions

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Abstract

Mixing of binary mixtures of nanopowders afforded by rapid expansion of high pressure and supercritical suspensions (REHPS) is investigated to examine the roles of two previously reported deagglomeration mechanisms. The quality of mixing was characterized through intensity and scale of segregation using concentration data obtained through energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy; the corresponding deagglomeration was quantified using differential mobility and image analyses in conjunction with electron microscopy. Increasing the pressure from which expansion was carried out, and decreasing the nozzle diameter led to improved deagglomeration. However, increased pressure alone did not influence the mixture quality, which was found to also depend on the scale of mixedness of the constituents before transport through the nozzle, establishing that the REHPS mixing is significantly improved by improving the quality of the premix. The scale of segregation correlated with the size of the most energetic eddies present during flow through the nozzle, both of which increased with nozzle diameter, corroborating the importance of previously reported shear-induced deagglomeration mechanism. Finally, REHPS was also shown to be capable of deagglomerating carbon nanotube bundles and mix them well with alumina, silica, and titania at submicron scale.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by the National Science Foundation through a Nano-Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) grant, DMI-0506722, and an IGERT fellowship to Daniel To through DGE-0504497. Partial support from EEC-0540855 to Rajesh Dave and Daniel To is also acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Otto York Department of Chemical, Pharmaceutical and Biological Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, Newark, NJ, 07102-1982, USA

    Daniel To & Rajesh Dave

  2. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

    Sankaran Sundaresan

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  1. Daniel To
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  2. Sankaran Sundaresan
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  3. Rajesh Dave
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Correspondence to Rajesh Dave.

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To, D., Sundaresan, S. & Dave, R. Nanoparticle mixing through rapid expansion of high pressure and supercritical suspensions. J Nanopart Res 13, 4253–4266 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-011-0369-0

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