The particulate properties
of a material after primary manufacturing
have a large impact on the secondary manufacturing processes. Especially,
powder characteristics leading to poor flowability are critical and
need to be controlled at the late steps of primary operations. The
surface properties of the primary particles are hereby one of the
determining factors for the behavior of particulate systems. Materials
with different particulate properties were coated using atomic layer
deposition (ALD) to apply an ultrathin film of TiO2 on
the primary particles. The presence of TiO2 coating was
confirmed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Five TiO2 ALD layers on the particle surface were enough to quadruple the
flowability of a partially crystalline material and to triple the
flowability of an amorphous material. The coating process did not
change the solid form of the materials and did not affect other critical
characteristics related to the functionality of the materials. Altogether,
the ALD coating of powders provides new possibilities as a scalable
and potentially continuously operating process that can solve problems
related to powder flowability during handling of bulk powders.
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