Contact mechanics of highly porous oxide nanoparticle agglomerates

Contact mechanics of highly porous oxide nanoparticle agglomerates

Fabre, A. (TU Delft ChemE/Product and Process Engineering)
Salameh, S. (TU Delft ChemE/Product and Process Engineering)
Colombi Ciacchi, Lucio (University of Bremen)
Kreutzer, M.T. (TU Delft ChemE/Chemical Engineering)
van Ommen, J.R. (TU Delft ChemE/Product and Process Engineering)

ChemE/Chemical Engineering

2016

Efficient nanopowder processing requires knowledge of the powder’s mechanical properties. Due to the large surface area to volume ratio, nanoparticles experience relatively strong attractive interactions, leading to the formation of micron-size porous structures called agglomerates. Significant effort has been directed towards the development of models and experimental procedures to estimate the elasticity of porous objects such as nanoparticle agglomerates; however, none of the existing models has been validated for solid fractions below 0.1. Here, we measure the elasticity of titania (TiO2, 22 nm), alumina (Al2O3, 8 nm), and silica (SiO2, 16 nm) nanopowder agglomerates by Atomic Force Microscopy, using a 3.75 μm glass colloid for the stress–strain experiments. Three sample preparations with varying degree of powder manipulation are assessed. The measured Young’s moduli are in the same order of magnitude as those predicted by the model of Kendall et al., thus validating it for the estimation of the Young’s modulus of structures with porosity above 90 %.

Young’s modulus
Porous agglomerates
Atomic force microscopy
Oxide particles
Nanoparticles
Particle characterization
Instrumentation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:8174e3e8-8ca0-4d0d-a5fa-413d872a09fb

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-016-3500-4

1388-0764

Journal of Nanoparticle Research: an interdisciplinary forum for nanoscale science and technology, 18 (7)

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2016 A. Fabre, S. Salameh, Lucio Colombi Ciacchi, M.T. Kreutzer, J.R. van Ommen