The surfactant Triton X-100 could help prevent colloidal metal nanocrystals from sticking to the water-oil interface in droplet reactors, according to new experiments by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US and Zhejiang University in China. The new finding could greatly improve the yield of nanocrystals produced by this processing technique.
Surfactant or no surfactant?
Colloidal metal nanocrystals are up-and-coming technologically important materials that might be ideal in applications such as catalysis, photonics and sensing. However, they are difficult to produce in large quantities.
Continuous-flow droplet reactors can be used to make nanocrystals in large quantities but they run into problems if the reaction solution does not contain a surfactant. This is understandable because the droplets have a much higher surface-to-volume ratio than the solution in a batch reactor and so the nanocrystals tend to concentrate at the water-oil interface of the droplets.
