Production of Reduced Aluminum Nanoparticles from Aluminum Oxide by Applying High Voltage Pulses to Solutions

Metal nanoparticles has been attracted as raw materials for nanoinks and nanopastes, which are used to Printed Electronics. Synthesizing various metal nanoparticles has been researched. We investigated possibility of reducing metal oxide to metal by high-voltage pulses in this paper. This method should save electrical consumption power compared to conventional methods using high-temperature and high-pressure plasma such as arc discharge. Reduced Al nanoparticles were obtained by applying high voltage pulses to solutions. It was found from hydrogen generation using reduced Al nanoparticles by applying high voltage pulses to solutions to evaluate reduction rate that a high reduction efficiency of 97% was obtained at maximum. We concluded that using high voltage pulses for reduction is suitable for application to printed electronics because oxide film on reduced Al nanoparticles is thin. Also, because this method is similar to laser ablation in liquids using pulse lasers, the similarities were discussed in this paper.