Size controlled CuO nanoparticles for Li-ion batteries

Air Entrainment During Flame Aerosol Synthesis of Nanoparticles

“…Particle Morphology, Size, and Yield (Figure 3a) are about 10 nm in diameter, consistent with d BET (Figure 4a) and are rather spherical, consistent with Waser et al (2013). In contrast, particles made with the fully enclosed FSP (Figure 3b, AE D 0 L/min) seem faceted with CuO (tenorite) characteristic lattice angles of about 99.5 and large edge lengths of 30-120 nm resulting from their long residence time at high temperatures.…”

“…Enclosed FSP has been used for the synthesis of TiO 2 gas sensors (Teleki et al 2006), metallic nanoparticles (Athanassiou et al 2006), in situ SiO 2 coating on TiO 2 (Teleki et al 2008), synthesis of maghemite, magnetite, or wustite iron oxides (Strobel and Pratsinis 2009), rutile TiO 2 (Kho et al 2011), and carbon-coated LiFePO 4 nanoparticles (Waser et al 2011). Typically, particles produced by enclosed FSP are considerably larger (3-4 times) than those made by open FSP under identical reactant flows and compositions as has been shown above with TiO 2 and Fe 2 O 3 as well as copper oxide (CuO) (Waser et al 2013).…”

“…The CuO precursor solutions (0.25 M Cu) comprised Soligen Copper 8 (OMG Borchers GmbH; 8.04 wt.% Cu) in a 2:1 (by volume) mixture of 2-ethylhexanoic acid (2-EAH, Sigma Aldrich) and xylene (Sigma Aldrich) solvents (Waser et al 2013). These solutions are fed to the FSP burner capillary (ID D 0.041 cm) at P D 5 mL/min and dispersed into a spray by D D 5 L/min O 2 (Pan Gas > 99.95%) through an annulus (ID/OD 0.07/0.1 cm) at 1.8 bar (g) pressure drop resulting in a nominal CuO production rate of 6 g/h.…”

“…The former conversion route leads to rather large (micron sized), porous, and even hollow or shell-like particles, while the latter leads to solid nanoparticles (Madler and Pratsinis 2002) in the form of agglomerates or aggregates depending on the characteristic times of coagulation and sintering (Tsantilis and Pratsinis 2004). So synthesis of particles of well-defined characteristics is controlled by the FSP process variables, including precursor solution and oxidant composition, and flow rates at open or enclosed burner configuration (Waser et al 2013).…”

“…The influence of AE on the evolution and product CuO yield, primary particle, and mobility sizes is investigated. Copper oxide is studied here for its size-dependent applications as active material in Li ion batteries (Waser et al 2013) or thermally conducting nano-fluids (Ozerinc et al 2010), to name a few.…”