Investigation on morphology measurement and evaluation of TiO_2 nanoparticles synthesized by SANSS

摘要

The article investigates the morphology of TiO_2 nanoparticles synthesized by a physical fabrication process, namely the submerged arc spray nanoparticle synthesis system (SANSS). An in-process sample preparation and an on-line nanoparticle sizing system using photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS) were developed to analyze the geometric (shape and size) properties of the TiO_2 nanoparticles. To evaluate the measurement results, the prepared particles were measured to quantify the nanoparticle geometric characteristics by employing a group of three different microscopes, including a transmission electron microscope (TEM), a scanning electron microscope and an atomic force microscope. More than 100 particle measurement for each experiment was performed to ensure data accuracy within 95% confidence level. The experimental results revealed that the averaged sphericity of the prepared nanoparticles was 5% of the particle size. It was found that the particle sphericity was deteriorated from 3.8% to 5.6% when the averaged particle diameter was decreased from 600 nm to 50 nm.