Comparative Study of Activity of Different Agings of Aluminum Nanopowders

The structure and activity of aluminum nanopowders with a 3nm oxide layer on their surface (3-nm-OLA) and 30nm oxide layers on their surface (30-nm-OLA) are investigated comparably under the same normal incident shock wave intensity. Their corresponding reaction products are characterized by x-ray diffraction, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The spectrum of x-ray diffraction shows that there are different phases of alumina in their products, which evidences directly the different reacting temperature in the shock tube. The x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals that the oxide layer thickness is 30nm on the product surface of 30-nm-OLA, while it is only 3nm on 3-nm-OLA. Images of transmission electron microscopy present additional evidence that the agglomeration mechanism is over sintering one in the containing-30-nm-OLA system, the reversed mechanism is observed in the containing-3-nm-OLA
reaction system.