In-situ Measurement and Control of Electric Discharge on Submerged Arc Synthesis Process for Continuous TiO_2 Nanoparticle Fabrication

摘要

This article presents electrical properties measuiunent and control of the nanoparticle preparation process known as the Submerged Arc Nanoparticle Synthesis System (SANSS) for continuous fabncation of TiO_2 particles with nano-scale size and good uniformity. Since the dielectric liquid used in the process was limited quantity of deionized water, the electrical conductivity of the liquid can be drastically varied during the process. Under this circumstance, the electrical discharge breakdown voltage was significantly influenced and varied during the submerged process and the process may become unstable when the electrical properties fluctuate beyond system control capability. Consequently, the prepared particle size could differ with a substantial variance range from 20 nm up to one micrometer. Therefore, an effective approach was proposed to control the electrical discharge properties so that the variation in particle size could be decreased and the fabricating process could be continuously operated to achieve desirable particle size and uniformity. Our experimental results showed that the developed in-situ measurement and control method decreased significantly the disparity of TiO_2 particle size from 1000 to 80 nm and reduced effectively the mean secondary particle size to 25 nm.