Effects of temperature-time history on the flame synthesis of nanoparticles in a swirl-stabilized tubular burner with two feeding modes

This work examines the effect of temperature-time history on the flame synthesis of titania nanoparticles using a specially designed swirl-stabilized tubular burner with two kinds of precursor feeding modes, the tangential inlet and the central jet inlet. When the Damköhler number is less than unity, a rapidly mixed type tubular flame is well-formed, which is chosen to be the condition for flame synthesis. The ex situ characterization of the synthesized TiO₂ nanoparticles shows that the particle samples from the tangential inlet feeding mode are mainly anatase (up to 84.3%) with a mean primary particle size of 13.0 ± 3.2 nm, whereas those from the central jet inlet feeding mode are large polydisperse rutile (up to 74%) nanoparticles with a mean size of 16.9 ± 8.8 nm. The significant differences in particle size and crystal phase are attributed to the varied temperature-time histories of two feeding modes, as the residence time of nanoparticles in high-temperature zone of the central jet inlet mode is much longer with larger variation than that of the tangential inlet feeding mode. Finally, the well-dispersed Pd/TiO₂ nanocatalysts are generated by elaborately feeding palladium acetate through the central jet inlet and titanium tetraisopropoxide through the tangential inlets, respectively, to better match the temperature-time histories with the decomposition properties of two different precursors. The study demonstrates the potential of this swirl-stabilized burner for producing tailored single- and multi-component nanomaterials for a variety of applications.