Fine particles research group we make materials for better future

We combine interdisciplinary experience in order to prioritize product development for our partners. Our research philosophy and expertise allow us to collaborate with industrial partners from many fields of technology, such as catalysis and photovoltaics, fuel cell and batteries, electronic and coated fluorescent materials for medical diagnostics, etc. with companies like Nanodynamics, Ferro, Phoenix Electronic Displays, Beckman Coulte, DuPont, Johnson Matthey, GE, Umicore, OMG Inc., and many more.

Who we are

A group of young ambitious and curious in nature postdocs and students working under the leadership of Professor Dan Goia. We synthesize, characterize, and modify highly dispersed uniform micrometer, sub-micrometer, and nanometer size metallic and non-metallic particles with well-controlled size, morphology, internal structure, composition, and surface properties. Our efforts are primarily focused on the development of chemical precipitation processes yielding high performance materials for existing and emerging applications.

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Science that we do

We pay particular attention to the basic research needed to understand the mechanisms responsible for the formation of uniform particles in liquid dispersion media. We have successfully developed many novel precipitation methods for economically generating highly dispersed metallic particles of Cu, Ni, Co, Bi, Ag, Au, Pd, Pt, and their alloys for applications in electronics, energy conversion and storage (PEM and SO fuel cells), medicine and biology, emissions control, sensors, and metallurgy.

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Materials that we make

Our group is strongly oriented towards processes development for manufacturing materials for the real world industrial applications. Most of our current grants are coming from the industrial sponsors around the globe. The processes developed in our laboratory are cost effective and easily scalable being well integrated with the production facilities of our sponsors. As a result, many materials originated from our group have already found industrial applications in electronics, metallurgy, catalysis and several emerging applications.

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Latest project

November 2012 - Controlled Phase Tuning of Nickel Nanoparticles from CCP to HCP

In this project the phase tuning of nickel nanoparticles from cubic close packing (ccp) to hexagonal close packing (hcp) was sontrolled by using different solvents. Specifically, the role of the polyols and their ability to convert nickel nanoparticles from ccp to hcp. Also, an impact of the reaction time and temperature of the reagents on crystal phase transformation of the nanoparticles is observed.

Nickel particles are characterized in detail by X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. Our results help to clarify the disagreements around the stability of different phases of Ni reported by other groups, and have significance for the industrial applications.

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