Comparative study of the synthesis of copper Nanoparticles in micromixer?microreactor and batch reactor systems

ANTONELLA GIORELLO; LAURA B. GUTIERREZ; JOSÉ LUIS HUESO; MANUEL ARRUEBO; VICTOR SEBASTIÁN; JESÚS SANTAMARÍA

Budapest

Conferencia; 13 th International Conferences on MicroReaction Technology (IMRET 13); 2014

Copper metal nanoparticles (CuNP) have attracted applications due to their improved catalytic, thermal, optical, and electrical properties at the nanolevel and play a crucial role in many applications such as lubricants, catalysts, thermal transfer nanofluids, electronic materials, optical devices and biological applications. Compared to noble metals, copper is significantly low cost. Batch reactors still constitute the most frequently used system in the wet synthesis of nanoparticles. This is so in spite of several obvious drawbacks such as: (i) heterogeneous distribution of reactants and temperature in the reactor, (ii) insufficient mixing, (iii) variations in the physicochemical characteristics of the resulting products among different batches, (iv) inherent discontinuity, (v) difficulty of scaling-up, and (vi) frequent need for post-synthesis purification steps. In order to overcome these disadvantages micro-scale reactors (i.e., micromixers, capillaries, junctions, etc.) have been used in the synthesis of nanoparticles to afford a precise control of reaction temperatures and residence times rendering nanoparticles with narrow particle-size distributions. This monomodal distribution is desirable because many physical properties of nanomaterials (e.g., optical band gaps in semiconductors, plasmon band energy in noble metals, superparamagnetism in metals and metallic oxides, or the ability to penetrate cells in biological applications) strongly depend on their size, shape and aspect ratio. In this work we report a comparison between both type of reactors. CuNP were prepared in diethyleneglycol using the cationic sur factant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide and polyvinyl pyrrolidone as a double capping agents.