Construction and Calibration of a Spark Discharge Generator to Create Mono-disperse Metallic Aerosol Nanoparticles

Sammanfattning: A Spark Discharge Generator is a versatile device which can be used to generate nanoparticles from any two conducting sources. The device constructed during this thesis project was to make metallic mono-disperse aerosol nanoparticles towards applications in catalysis and nanowire growth. The operating principle is two electrodes separated by a gap with an applied voltage above the discharge voltage. This high potential creates an ionization channel and a spark is discharged between the two electrodes causing a high local temperature on the ends of the electrodes which causes thermal evaporation of the material into the surrounding gas. These initial particles with sizes on the atomic scale collide and adhere by a process called coagulation creating larger nanoparticles which may then be filtered, reshaped, counted, and deposited. A theoretical introduction is presented, a description of the components is included, some techniques for calibration of the device are described, and initial data is shown.