SBIR Phase I: Synthesis of Metal and Metal Alloy Nanoparticles

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目致力于开发一种合成金属和金属合金纳米颗粒的新型固态方法。开发了一种用于金属氧化物和混合金属氧化物纳米颗粒的方法，现在可以扩展到金属和金属合金纳米颗粒的合成。这种方法成本低，对环境友好，可以生产出高质量的任何金属纳米颗粒或任何数量的金属合金，并具有精确的化学计量比例。该方法简单地包括混合常见的干燥化学起始材料并在适度温度下（例如300°C）烘烤所得前驱体材料约1小时。如果烘烤步骤在环境气氛中进行，则形成金属氧化物；然而，如果在稍高的温度下使用还原环境，则形成金属纳米颗粒。在最初的实验中，金属颗粒较大，为30-50nm，而氧化物颗粒为2-10nm，并且存在氧化物污染。该项目的重点是开发生产小型、纯金属和金属合金纳米颗粒的方法。该项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发一种不使用溶剂的纳米颗粒合成方法，这将导致一种比现有工艺更经济且对环境有更好影响的工艺。这一过程将对催化、电池和燃料电池领域产生重大影响。欧盟委员会发布了一份关于纳米技术的综合报告，预测到2015年纳米材料市场将达到3000亿欧元。如果这一预测是准确的，那么纳米颗粒的生产规模将相当于我们目前许多最大的工业。由于市场仍处于发展的早期阶段，在更多的能源消耗和污染方法成为行业标准之前，该行业有机会采用智能方法。目前制造纳米粒子的方法存在大量的能量消耗、大量的废物和/或净化问题。Cosmas合成方法有潜力成为提供新型金属和合金材料的首选方法，用于数百种低到高技术应用，因为它将是低成本的，环保的，并且将产生几乎可以满足任何产品规格的纳米颗粒。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project addresses the development of a novel solid-state method of synthesizing metal and metal alloy nanoparticles. A method has been developed for metal oxide and mixed metal oxide nanoparticles which can now be extended to the synthesis of metal and metal alloy nanoparticles. This approach will be very low cost and environmentally friendly and will produce high quality nanoparticles of any metal or alloy of any number of metals in exact stoichiometric proportions. The method simply involves mixing common dry chemical starting materials and baking the resulting precursor material at modest temperatures (e.g., 300°C) for approximately one hour. If the baking step is performed in the ambient atmosphere, metal oxides are formed; however, if a reducing environment is employed at somewhat higher temperatures, metal nanoparticles are formed. In initial experiments, the metal particles are rather large, 30-50nm as compared to 2-10nm for the oxides, and there is oxide contamination. This project focuses on developing the method to produce small, pure metal and metal alloy nanoparticles. The broader impacts/commercial potential of this project is to develop a nanoparticle synthesis that does not use solvents which would result in a process that is economical and has better enivironmental impact than current processes. This process could have major impact to the fields of catalysis, batteries, and fuel cells. The European Commission published a comprehensive report on nanotechnology which predicted that the nanomaterials market is going to reach 300 billion Euros by 2015. If this forecast is accurate, manufacturing of nanoparticles is going to be required on a scale equivalent to many of our largest current industries. Because the market is still in its very early stages of development, this industry has an opportunity to adopt intelligent methods before more energy consumptive and polluting approaches become entrenched as industry standards. Current methods for making nanoparticles suffer from heavy energy consumption, large amounts of waste, and/or purification problems. The Cosmas synthetic method has the potential to become the method of choice for supplying novel metal and alloy materials for hundreds of low to high technology applications because it will be low cost, environmentally friendly and will yield nanoparticles which can meet virtually any product specification.