Formation of ZnO, MgO and NiO nanoparticles from aqueous droplets in flame reactor

Nanoparticles of ZnO, MgO and NiO were produced from droplets of aqueous salt solution in the flame spray pyrolysis reactor. Conventional spray pyrolysis, in which electrical furnace reactor is used, is reported to produce nanoparticles only from acetate precursor. If the reactor pressure is low (∼60 torr), nitrate salt precursor is also known to produce nanoparticles. In this paper, we report that nanoparticles are produced from nitrate as well as acetate salt precursor solution when propane-oxygen diffusion flame is used to decompose aqueous aerosol droplets. At low flame temperature, however, nanoparticles are not formed and the particle morphology is similar to the morphology produced by the conventional spray pyrolysis. At high flame temperature, nanoparticles are formed, regardless of the salt type. Nanoparticles are formed at lower flame temperature from acetate salts than from nitrate salts. All nanoparticle prepared in this work were fully crystallized and the size measured from transmission electron microscopy images was 30 nm. This size agreed well with the particle size calculated from X-ray diffraction and specific surface area data.