Building a better nanoparticle reactor
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - 06:14
in Physics & Chemistry
On a recent day in December, Peter Kong and his team at Idaho National Laboratory fired up their newly designed plasma reactor to more than 10,000 degrees Celsius. While feed lines pushed sand-like silica particles into the top of the noisy reactor, a fine layer of white powder began accumulating in the collection chamber at the bottom. The powder doesn't look like much, but each granule is a nanoparticle, too tiny to be viewed under an ordinary microscope. Unseen in the center of the reactor, the stream of silica feedstock is completely vaporized, forming the miniscule particles as it exits and cools.