The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Brigham Young University (BYU) has chosen the Nanosight LM-10 system to support its research into the synthesis of inorganic nanoparticles.
The BYU research team of Dr Brian Woodfield is working on the development of a simple process that allows the group to make a nearly unlimited array of well-defined inorganic nanoparticles that have controlled sizes from 1nm to bulk.
The particles are highly crystalline with well-defined shapes (usually spherical but sometimes rods).
The method produces them with chemical and phase purities as high as 99.9999 per cent, while the particle size distribution is controlled to approximately +/-10 per cent.
Woodfield expects the team to make industrial-size quantities with manufacturing costs significantly less than any other current technique.
PhD candidate Betsy Olsen, principal user, said: 'The Nanosight is used to measure particle size as one way to quantify the amount of agglomeration in the process and to see if our de-agglomeration/dispersion techniques are working.
'The system is used alongside other techniques such as TEM and DLS.
'However, the Nanosight is much faster, less expensive and easier to run than TEM.
'It provides more control compared to DLS and other traditional particle-size analysers as it allows you to visualise what you are measuring particle by particle.
'For example, this means you can follow a poly-dispersed system more accurately,' she added.
Nanosight's approach, known as Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA), has been shown to be suitable for both research and process-control use.
