TY - JOUR
T1 - Continuous flow synthesis of anisotropic cadmium selenide and zinc selenide nanoparticles
AU - Kumar, Vivek
AU - Fustér, Héctor A.
AU - Oh, Nuri
AU - Zhai, You
AU - Deshpande, Kishori
AU - Shim, Moonsub
AU - Kenis, Paul J.A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The manuscript was written through contributions of all authors. All authors have given approval to the final version of the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Dow Chemical Company for research agreement #226772AC and a graduate fellowship to V.K. We thank Dr. Peter Trefonas, Dr. Jieqian Zhang, Dr. Jong Park, Dr. Kevin Howard for stimulating discussions, and Ajit Vikram for help with the manuscript revisions. We also acknowledge Mike Har-land for providing critical inputs on designing and fabrication of the reactor setup.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.
PY - 2017/3
Y1 - 2017/3
N2 - Anisotropic semiconductor nanoparticles find use in various applications ranging from electronics to photocatalysis and biolabeling. Batch synthesis methods typically used for their synthesis are often hampered by slow mixing, slow heating/cooling, and lack of batch-to-batch reproducibility, especially when scaling up. The modular continuous flow reactor reported here overcomes some of these challenges. It enables air-sensitive syntheses at temperatures as high as 750 °C, supports rapid heating and cooling times (≈1 s or less), and enables syntheses that involve reagents that are viscous or even solid at room temperature. For validation we pursued two systems: the synthesis of (i) CdSe nanorods and bipods, and of (ii) ZnSe nanorods. Nanoparticles with low variance in quantum confined dimension (width) -16% for CdSe and 11% for ZnSe were obtained. For comparison, the same products were also synthesized using two batch approaches, hot-injection and heat-up, under similar conditions. The batch products were less uniform: 30% variance in quantum confined dimension. Furthermore, the lack of precise temperature control in the batch processes resulted in CdSe nanorods with irregularshaped, jagged branches whereas the continuous process produced CdSe nanorods with uniform, straight branches. The modular continuous flow reactor design is suited for scale up, allowing working flow rates as high as ≈10 m Lmin-1, which translates into a production rate of ≈158 gday-1 for CdSe.
AB - Anisotropic semiconductor nanoparticles find use in various applications ranging from electronics to photocatalysis and biolabeling. Batch synthesis methods typically used for their synthesis are often hampered by slow mixing, slow heating/cooling, and lack of batch-to-batch reproducibility, especially when scaling up. The modular continuous flow reactor reported here overcomes some of these challenges. It enables air-sensitive syntheses at temperatures as high as 750 °C, supports rapid heating and cooling times (≈1 s or less), and enables syntheses that involve reagents that are viscous or even solid at room temperature. For validation we pursued two systems: the synthesis of (i) CdSe nanorods and bipods, and of (ii) ZnSe nanorods. Nanoparticles with low variance in quantum confined dimension (width) -16% for CdSe and 11% for ZnSe were obtained. For comparison, the same products were also synthesized using two batch approaches, hot-injection and heat-up, under similar conditions. The batch products were less uniform: 30% variance in quantum confined dimension. Furthermore, the lack of precise temperature control in the batch processes resulted in CdSe nanorods with irregularshaped, jagged branches whereas the continuous process produced CdSe nanorods with uniform, straight branches. The modular continuous flow reactor design is suited for scale up, allowing working flow rates as high as ≈10 m Lmin-1, which translates into a production rate of ≈158 gday-1 for CdSe.
KW - Anisotropic nanoparticles
KW - Cadmium selenide
KW - Microreactor
KW - Semiconductors
KW - Zinc selenide
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U2 - 10.1002/cnma.201600296
DO - 10.1002/cnma.201600296
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85035124836
SN - 2199-692X
VL - 3
SP - 204
EP - 211
JO - ChemNanoMat
JF - ChemNanoMat
IS - 3
ER -