Synthesis, isolation, and chemical reactivity studies of nanocrystalline zinc oxide

Nanocrystals of ZnO have been produced by an alkoxide based synthesis invol ving diethylzinc, tert-butyl alcohol, ethanol, and water. The resulting ZnO is in the form of a powder made up of zincite crystallites in the size ran ge of 3-5 nm. These crystallites aggregate together to form larger spherica l particles. These spherical particles have been studied by transmission el ectron microscopy (TEM) and Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) methods and were fo und to contain many poses and tunnels. IL is because of this that an unchar acteristically high surface area is found, averaging about 120 m(2)/g. As s een with other metal oxides, once they are made as nanoparticles, their rea ctivity is greatly enhanced. This is thought to be due to morphological dif ferences, whereas larger crystallites have only a small percentage of react ive sites on the surface, smaller crystallites will possess much higher sur face concentration of such sites, Elemental analysis, X-ray diffraction, an d infrared spectroscopy have been used to characterize this nanoparticle Zn O, and reactions with CCl4, SO2, and paraoxon have demonstrated significant ly enhanced reactivity and/or capacity compared with common forms of ZnO po wders.