SYNTHESIS OF NICKEL NANOPOWDERS IN MICROEMULSION

IntroductionNanometer-scalecrystallitesofvariousmetalsandnonmetalshaveattractedagreatdealofattentionoverthepastdecade.Forsuchcrystallites,thephysicalandchemicalpropertiesareheavilydependentonparticlesizeandshape,and,asaresult,thesematerialshaveawiderangeofapplications(Ai&Kang,2003).Monodispersefinenickelparticlesarerequiredforhightechnologyapplicationsinalkalinerechargeablebatteries,magneticrecordingmediaandchemicalcatalysts,etc.,suchasconductingandmagneticinks,andferrofluids(Glicksman,1984).…

SYNTHESIS OF NICKEL NANOPOWDERS IN MICROEMULSION

Introduction Nanometer-scale crystallites of various metals and nonmetals have attracted a great deal of attention over the past decade. For such crystallites, the physical and chemical properties are heavily dependent on particle size and shape, and, as a result, these materials have a wide range of applications (Ai & Kang, 2003). Monodisperse fine nickel particles are required for high technology applications in alkaline rechargeable batteries, magnetic recording media and chemical catalysts, etc., such as conducting and magnetic inks, and ferrofluids (Glicksman, 1984).Among the various methods for synthesis of ultrafine nickel powders including physical methods such as ball milling,pulsed electrodeposition (PED), thermal plasma, gas deposition methods (GDM), γ-radiation (Wang et al., 1988),and chemical methods such as sonochemical decomposition (Gao et al., 2001), chemical reduction (Illy-Cherrey et al., 2002), microwave hydrothermal method (Komameni et al., 1992), mechanochemical and polyol processing (Baburaj et al., 1997; Hegde et al., 1997), chemical reduction in an aqueous solution (Li et al., 1999; Jung et al., 2003;Degen & Macek, 1999; Syukri et al., 2003) is chosen in the present study because of easy controlling of the size and shape of Ni nanocrystals.