Reactor system for the study of high-temperature short-time sintering of nanoparticles

A high-temperature short residence time flow reactor system has been realized for the investigation of the gas phase sintering kinetics of nanoparticles separated from all other synthesis mechanisms, e.g., chemical reaction, nucleation, coagulation and condensation. Major components are a hot-wall tubular reactor for the production of unsintered aggregates consisting of spherical primary particles in the size range 10–80 nm and a sintering reactor for the investigation of the sintering kinetics at well-defined temperature and residence time history. Therefore, rapid heating and quenching of the particles at the beginning and at the end of the reaction zone, respectively, is maintained. Main parameters in the sintering reactor are: temperatures up to 1873 K and residence times in the range 8–1000 ms. The reactor conditions are characterized by temperature profile measurements with a newly constructed suction thermocouple probe and by computational fluid dynamics simulations of the residence time distributions. Exemplary results of the sintering of silica nanoparticles obtained by transmission electron microscopy analysis are presented.