Laser pyrolysis - a platform technology to produce nanoscale materials for a range of product applications

摘要

Laser pyrolysis, a gas phase process for the synthesis of nanomaterials, has been pioneered and developed as a viable nanoparticle manufacturing platform (NPM™) by NanoGram Corporation. It has been successfully employed in producing various nanoscale materials including metals, simple and complex metal oxides, carbides, nitrides, rare-earth doped oxides, multi-elemental glasses among others. NPM™ processing routinely produces very high-quality nanoscale particles with high degree of crystallinity, generally spheroidal morphology and exceptionally tight particle size distributions. In this paper we will introduce and describe laser pyrolysis-based NPM™ process as a platform technology with demonstrated capability of scaling-up nanomaterials production to 1kg/hr using this technology. Nanoscale materials made by laser pyrolysis are currently being developed for a range of product applications such as phosphors for solid-state lighting applications, high-index fillers for optical polymer composites, cathode materials for lithium ion batteries. Nanomaterials from NPM™ process have already been commercialized in an exceptionally high-rate battery as cathode material for defibrillators batteries by a NanoGram spin-off company. In this paper we briefly present the capabilities of NPM™ processing by showing examples of complex materials currently being synthesized, and outline the levels of control available in the process to enable functional materials.