Image of the week from JPhysD special issue on plasma synthesis of nanoparticles and nanocrystals

By Jennifer Sanders on July 27, 2015

This week’s image is taken from one of the papers recently published in JPhysD as part of a special issue on plasma synthesis of nanoparticles and nanocrystals. These nanoscale materials are important for nanotechnology, and are regularly constituent parts of microelectronic devices, for example, and low temperature plasma has become an important technique in their synthesis. This special issue, which is free to read until 23 October 2015, reviews the field of plasma synthesis of nanoparticles and nanocrystals, examines the challenges, and discusses the future direction.

Barwe et al‘s contribution to this special issue examines non-equilibrium microplasma jets used to synthesize silicon nanoparticles. Using optical emission spectroscopy (OES) and high-time-resolution imaging — using an intensified (ICCD) camera — they were able to obtain information about plasma chemistry processes and also delve into the operation of the discharge. The experimental parameters, including the electric field application, and the magnitude and of the argon/silane/hydrogen gas mixture, can result in three operation modes: filamentary — this weeks image — and two different types of diffuse plasma. Analysis of the synthesized nanoparticles using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) revealed that it is possible to generate nanoparticles whose size is almost independent of silane concentration in the parallel-field plasma whilst particle size was highly sensitive to silane concentration in the cross-field plasma.