The demand for nanoparticles has been rapidly increasing with the growing
nanomaterials applications – from construction and coatings to energy, cosmetic
and pharmaceutical industries. The particles are mainly preperd in a milling
process during which bigger particles are reduced in size to meet the
requirements for the application. The characterization of manufactured
nanoparticles is essential to reduce material’s costs and assure quality and
safety that are critical and can be highly difficult issues. Thus, the particle size
and its evolution during this process are the most critical to address the issues
of: end-user specification, possible agglomeration of nanoparticles, milling
efficiency, optimization of the required process energy, process scaling-up…
The demands for size and stability testing during nanomilling are high. The
method must provide wide size measuring range (100 nm to 100µm), wide
particle concentration range, very short measuring time (reduction of process
downtime), non-destructive testing, sensitivity, high cleanability and safe
operation with respect to nanoparticle risk prevention.
