MICROWAVE-HYDROTHERMAL PROCESSING OF METAL POWDERS

Novel microwave-hydrothermal processing has been developed by us recen tly for the synthesis of a wide variety of ceramic powders. Herein, we report the use of microwave-hydrothermal processing to synthesize sev eral metal powders such as Cu, Ni, Co, and Ag by reducing their corres ponding metal salts or hydroxides with ethylene glycol. Metal powders have been produced extremely rapidly a (few minutes) by microwave cata lysis. The kinetics of metal powder synthesis have been increased by a t least an order of magnitude by microwave-hydrothermal processing com pared to the conventional refluxing process in ethylene glycol at abou t 195 degrees C.