title: Continuous and scalable production of well-controlled noble-metal nanocrystals in milliliter-sized droplet reactors.
abstract: Noble-metal nanocrystals are essential to applications in a variety of areas, including catalysis, electronics, and photonics. Despite the large number of reports, there still exists a gap between academic studies and industrial applications due to the lack of ability to produce the nanocrystals in large quantities while still maintaining the good uniformity and precise controls. Because the nucleation and growth of colloidal nanocrystals are highly sensitive to experimental conditions, it is impractical to scale up their production by simply increasing the reaction volume. Here we report a new and practical approach based on milliliter-sized droplet reactors to the scalable production of nanocrystals. The droplets of 0.25 mL in volume were produced as a continuous flow in a fluidic device assembled from commercially available components. As a proof of concept, we have synthesized Pd, Au, and Pd-M (M = Au, Pt, and Ag) nanocrystals with controlled sizes, shapes, compositions, and structures on a scale of 1-10 g per hour (e.g., 3.6 g per hour for Pd cubes of 10 nm in edge length).
authors.affiliation: The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University , Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Guangda
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Niu
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Jinguo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Limin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tong
authors.forename: Liduo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Moon J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Younan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xia
keywords: Colloidal nanocrystals; continuous production; droplet reactors; scale up