Zirconium Carbide Nanoparticles Research Articles

Synthesis of porous ZrC particles derived from MOF-801

Porous zirconium carbide (ZrC) nanoparticles were synthesized by carbothermal reduction using MOF-801, a zirconium-based metal-organic framework (Zr-MOF), and sucrose, which serves as an environment-friendly carbon source. The sucrose was adsorbed into the pores of MOF-801 for adjusting the carbon content. The results showed that the final ZrC particles retained the morphology of the initial MOF-801 particles with a round shape and a uniform size of 261 ± 37 nm. Importantly, the material was able to maintain its high surface area up to 1500 °C. The specific surface area of ZrC nanoparticles synthesized using a 1.5:1 Sucrose: MOF-801 molar ratio gradually decreased from 186 m2/g to 13 m2/g as the reaction temperature increased from 1500 °C to 2000 °C, revealing that the porosity of the porous ZrC particles can be controlled due to partial sintering inside the particles at different temperatures. Porous ZrC particles show promise for ultra-high temperature applications such as thermal insulation and as porous substrates.

Stretchable and ultra‐light non‐woven thermal material with effective photo‐thermal conversion based on solution blow spinning technology

AbstractAn ideal insulation material has long been envisioned as one that not only minimizes heat loss but also provides additional heat. This study presents a non‐woven fabric, comprising ultra‐fine fibers embedded with zirconium carbide nanoparticles (ZrC NPs), prepared via solution blow spinning (SBS) and thermal crosslinking technology. Our results suggest that the fluffily‐structured elastomer, fabricated using rigid polystyrene and flexible polyurethane, exhibits high porosity (96.96%), ultra‐light characteristics (volume density of 47.12 mg cm−3), and effective heat retention (thermal conductivity of 23.1 mW mK−1 at −40°C). Moreover, the fabric demonstrates remarkable fracture strength (206.38 kPa), high elongation at break (34.5%), and superior elasticity even after 100 compression cycles at 40% strain. Despite the fact that introducing 12% ZrC increases the thermal conductivity of the base fabric by 6%, the NPs endow the material with an excellent photothermal conversion function. Following 10 min of exposure to visible light, the surface temperature increases to 71.5°C. Given its impressive performance, this novel non‐woven fabric demonstrates significant potential for applications in the field of cold protection.

Effect of Mg stoichiometry on self-propagating high temperature synthesis (SHS) of ZrC nanoparticles in ZrO2-Mg-C system

ABSTRACT It is significant to develop the production processes of Zirconium Carbide (ZrC) nanoparticles due to its superior properties. In this study, self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) followed by an acid leaching route was used to produce ZrC powder. ZrO2 was used as the zirconium source, C black as the carbon source and Mg as reductant. After modelling thermodynamically with the FactSage 7.1 software in terms of adiabatic temperature and possible phases, SHS processes were carried out with varying reductant stoichiometry (90%, 100%, 110%, 120%) and applying chemical treatment with HCl leaching for purification. The obtained products were characterised by XRD and SEM-EDS analysis. The optimum reductant stoichiometry for the production of ZrC was determined as 110%. As a result of the leaching processes, it was revealed that ZrC powders with an average particle size of 320 nm and containing a small amount of oxide residues could be synthesised. Compared to carbothermal reduction, which is the main production method of the material, the desired compounds were synthesised with much lower energy consumption and in much finer particles.

Enhancement of Structural and Optical Properties of CMC/PAA Blend by Addition of Zirconium Carbide Nanoparticles for Optics and Photonics Applications

Nanocomposites of (CMC-PAA-ZrC) made with different nano zirconium carbide percentages by casting method (0, 1.5, 3, 4.5, and 6) wt%. The results showed that FTIR spectra shift in peak position and change in shape and intensity, compared with pure (CMC-PAA) blend. Microscopic photographs show a clear difference in the samples when increasing proportions of zirconium carbide nanoparticles, when the concentration of zirconium carbide NP reached 6% wt, the nanoparticles make up a continuous network inside (CMC-PAA) blend. Structural and optical characteristics have investigated the findings showed that the absorption of (CMC-PAA-ZrC) nanocomposites increases with increasing of ZrC NPs, while transmission decrease. The absorption coefficient, extinction coefficient, refractive index, real and imaginary parts of dielectric and optical conductivity are increasing with rises concentration of ZrC. Also optical energy gap decreased from 4.9 eV to 4.05 eV and from 4.5 eV to 3.65 eV for allowed and forbidden indirect transition respectively with increasing ZrC NPs. The results indicate that the (CMC-PAA-ZrC) nanostructures can be considered as promising materials for optoelectronics applications.

Investigating the Properties of Electrodeposited of Ni-P-ZrC Nanocomposite Coatings.

Superior corrosion resistance along with higher mechanical performance is becoming a primary requirement to decrease operational costs in the industries. Nickel-based phosphorus coatings have been reported to show better corrosion resistance properties but suffer from a lack of mechanical strength. Zirconium carbide nanoparticles (ZCNPs) are known for promising hardness and unreactive behavior among variously reported reinforcements. The present study focuses on the synthesis and characterization of novel Ni-P-ZrC nanocomposite coatings developed through the electrodeposition technique. Successful coelectrodeposition of ZCNPs without any observable defects was carried out utilizing a modified Watts bath and optimized conditions. For a clear comparison, structural, surface, mechanical, and electrochemical behaviors of Ni-P and Ni-P-ZrC nanocomposite coatings containing 0.75 g/L ZCNPs were thoroughly investigated. The addition of ZCNPs has a considerable impact on the properties of Ni-P coatings. Enhancement in the mechanical properties (microhardness, nanoindentation, wear, and erosion) is observed due to reinforcement of ZCNPs in the Ni-P matrix, which can be attributed to mainly the dispersion hardening effect. Furthermore, corrosion protection efficiency (PE%) of the Ni-P matrix was enhanced by the incorporation of ZCNPs from 71 to 85.4%. The Ni-P-ZrC nanocomposite coatings provide an exciting option for their utilization in the automotive, electronics, aerospace, oil, and gas industry.

Moisture-Wicking and Solar-Heated Coaxial Fibers with a Bark-like Appearance for Fabric Comfort Management.

Maintaining the human body's comfort is a predominant requirement of functional textiles, but there are still considerable drawbacks to design an intelligent textile with proper moisture absorption and evaporation properties. Herein, we develop moisture-wicking and solar-heated coaxial fibers with a bark-like appearance for fabric comfort management. The cortex layer of coaxial fibers can absorb moisture via the synergistic effect of the hierarchical roughness and the hydrophilic polymeric matrix. The core layer containing zirconium carbide nanoparticles can assimilate energy from the body and sunlight, which raises the surface temperature of the material and accelerates moisture evaporation. The resulting coaxial fiber-based membrane exhibits an excellent droplet diffusion radius of 2.73 cm, an excellent wicking height of 6.97 cm, and a high surface temperature of 61.7 °C which is radiated by simulated sunlight. Moreover, the designed fabric also exhibits a significant UV protection factor of 2000. Overall, the successful synthesis of such fascinating fibrous membranes enables the rapid removal of sweat from the human body textile, providing a suitable and comfortable microenvironment for the human body.

Ultralight and superelastic fibrous sponges with effective heat preservation and photo-thermal conversion for personal cold protection

Advanced warming materials integrating functions of reducing heat loss and providing extra heat for the body have attracted much attention. In this work, an ultralight and superelastic fibrous sponge serving as novel warmth retention materials was obtained by assembling the fibers contained zirconium carbide nanoparticles (ZrC NPs) into three-dimension (3D) configuration and creating the semi-interpenetrating polymer networks (semi-IPNs) within fibers via humidity-induced electrospinning and the thermal crosslinking technology. The resulting fibrous sponge (PCFS-12) exhibits high heat preservation ability (~25.2 mW m−1 K−1) and effective photo-thermal conversion performance that could improve the temperature of PCFS-12 to 70.3 °C under the sunlight irradiation. Moreover, the PCFS-12 showed a low density of 2.8 mg cm−3, low-temperature superelasticity with minor plastic deformation after 1000 compression, and good hydrophobic property (WCA = 132°). This work provides a novel approach to develop high-performance warmth retention materials for personal cold protection.

Mechanical properties and thermal shock resistance of tungsten alloys strengthened by laser fragmentation-processed zirconium carbide nanoparticles

Zirconium carbide (ZrC) nanoparticles with an average size of 5.6 nm were synthesized through laser fragmentation (LF) from as-received 20–60 nm ZrC particles, and LF-ZrC nanoparticle dispersion-strengthened tungsten (LF-WZC) samples were fabricated by spark plasma sintering method. The average grain size of LF-WZC is 1.91 μm and most ZrC particles in LF-WZC are smaller than 10 nm. LF-WZC exhibits finer grain size, higher yield strength and hardness but lower ductility as compared with W-ZrC samples using as-received ZrC (WZC). The results showed that finer ZrC nanoparticles dispersed in tungsten can enhance the strength by hindering the motion of dislocations, but they may also introduce stress concentration and thus reduce the ductility. The thermal shock resistance of the WZC and LF-WZC samples was investigated using an electron beam device. The LF-WZC sample also exhibits a higher cracking threshold (0.33–0.44 GW·m−2) than WZC (0.22–0.33 GW·m−2) at room temperature. The enhanced thermal shock resistance of LF-WZC could be attributed to its high yield strength.

The effect of Adding (ZrC) Nanoparticles to (PVP-PVA) Blend on their Optical properties for Humidity Sensor Application

The optical properties for adding (ZrC) nanoparticles to (PVP-PVA) were studied. The Poly(vinyl alcohol) and poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) were blended and films were obtained by the casting method. Zirconium carbide nanoparticles (ZrC) were added with different weight percentages (4 wt.%, 8 wt.%, 12 wt.% and 16 wt.%) to the (PVP-PVA) blend. The wavelength range used to measure the optical properties is (220-820) nm. Analyzing the results it is found that the absorbance (A) decrease by increasing the (ZrC) nanoparticles concentrations, while the coefficient of absorption (α), coefficient of extinction (k), index of refraction and the constants of real and imaginary (∈ 1, and ∈ 2) increased by increasing the concentration of (ZrC) nanoparticles. The gap of energy (Eg ) of (PVP-PVA) blend increases with the increasing of (ZrC) nanoparticles weight percentages.

Tensile behavior of hybrid tungsten composites with zirconium carbide nanoparticles and tungsten fibers

Hybrid tungsten composites reinforced with zirconium carbide (ZrC) nanoparticles and tungsten fibers were developed by the conventional powder metallurgy process (ball-mill mixing of powders and fibers followed by spark plasma sintering). The synergistic and mutual influences of the fibers and nanoparticles on tungsten were investigated in tensile behavior and fracture-energy tests. Aided by the ZrC nanoparticles, up to 30% of the fibers could be embedded in the tungsten matrix. The fracture energy was maximized by co-introducing 0.2 wt% ZrC particles with 20 wt% short tungsten fibers. The fracture-energy enhancement of the short fibers is contributed by pseudo-toughness from the fiber–matrix interface, inherent toughness from the fibers themselves, and grain refinement (by 50%) of the tungsten matrix. The fracture energy of the composite is very sensitive to the ZrC content, because the two-way action of ZrC weakens the pseudo-toughness of the interface energy.

The Synthesis of Zirconium Carbide Nanoparticles by Lithium Thermal Reduction of Zirconium Dioxide and Waste Plastic

In this letter, zirconium carbide (ZrC) nanoparticles have been synthesized through the reaction of zirconium dioxide and waste polyethylene (PE) at 700 °C, in which metallic lithium acted as the r...

Fabrication of ZrC/PVA-co-PE NF composite membranes with photo-thermal conversion for solar desalination

Abstract ZrC/PVA-co -PE nanofiber (NF) composite membranes with excellent photo-thermal conversion property was fabricated by compounding the zirconium carbide (ZrC) nanoparticles with PVA- co -PE NFs. The size distribution of ZrC nanoparticles, the morphologies and structures of NF composite membranes were characterized by Laser particle size analyzer and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It was found that the ZrC nanoparticles with diameters ranging from 25 nm to 125 nm were uniformly dispersed in NF composite membranes. Furthermore, the thermal behaviors of ZrC/PVA- co-PE NF composite membranes with different ratios of ZrC nanoparticles were systematically analyzed. Results show that the ZrC/PVA-co-PE NF composite membranes possess excellent photo-thermal conversion property (temperature under infrared lamp: 133.4 °C) and remarkable evaporation rates (15.6 km. m−2 . h−1) under xenon lamp, which further proved that the ZrC/PVA-co-PE NF composite membranes have broad prospects in the field of solar seawater desalination.

Microwave synthesis of ultra-high temperature ceramic ZrC nanopowders

Ultra-high temperature ceramic zirconium carbide (ZrC) nanopowders were synthesized for the first time via a microwave-assisted carbothermal reduction reaction using zirconia (ZrO2) and carbon black (C) as the starting materials. The effect of the reaction time on the formation of ZrC nanoparticles was examined. The as-synthesized samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), helium pycnometry, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) N2 adsorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The lattice constant and interplanar distance (d111) were calculated, and the crystallite size was obtained using the Scherrer formula. Results from the experiment show highly crystalline ZrC, with crystallites less than 50 nm and nearly-spherical morphology, using 3 kW of power and only 50 min of reaction time, with a maximum reaction temperature of 1400 °C, lower than those involved using the conventional heating carbothermal reduction. The reaction time was ∼2 h shorter than that required by using a combined sol-gel and microwave-assisted carbothermal reduction method, used to prepare submicron ZrC powders (200–300 nm). The high heating rate achieved on the synthesis was favored by the excellent microwave absorption of carbon black, and the uniform heating at molecular level induced by the microwaves on the samples.

Broad-band absorption and photo-thermal conversion properties of zirconium carbide aqueous nanofluids

Abstract Broad-band absorbers are very important for solar thermal utilization. However, seeking ideal solar absorbers whose absorption spectra match well with the solar spectrum is still a great challenge. In this work, zirconium carbide (ZrC) nanofluids with broad-band absorption characteristic were prepared by milling and dispersing ZrC nanoparticles in water. The ZrC nanoparticles show strong optical absorption in the range from 300 to 2000 nm. At a penetration distance of 1 cm, the ZrC nanofluids of 0.02 wt% can absorb almost 100% of the solar irradiation in the full spectrum and the solar weighted absorption coefficient (Am) is 0.99. The results indicate that the ZrC nanofluids of 0.02 wt% are very close to the ideal solar irradiation absorbers. The photo-thermal conversion efficiency of the ZrC nanofluids was evaluated by a direct method focusing on the nanofluids themselves instead of indirectly represented by the efficiency of the solar thermal collector as presented in the previous reports. By recording and analyzing the temperature rise of the nanofluids under the illumination of a solar simulator, the photo-thermal conversion efficiency for the ZrC nanofluids of 0.02 wt% was determined to be 92%. The high efficiency is attributed to the broad-band absorption of the ZrC nanoparticles.

Synthesis of zirconium carbide nanoparticles by polymerised complex route

A polymerised complex route, based on polyesterification between tartaric acid–zirconium complex and ethylene glycol (EG), has been demonstrated to synthesise ZrC powders at a relatively low temperature (1300°C). The Fourier transform infrared results confirmed the coordination of tartaric acid to the zirconium ion. Furthermore, this complex reacted with EG through polyesterification to immobilise the metal ion in the rigid polymer. The intimate mixing of the reaction components has thus been achieved in ZrO2/carbon ‘coke” due to the suppression of segregation of the reaction components during pyrolysis. Finally, well crystallised ZrC nanoparticles (50–150 nm) were obtained through the carbothermal reduction of ZrO2/carbon ‘coke’, concerning the formation of the intermediate oxycarbide phase.

Activated zirconium carbide promoted Pt/C electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction

The activated porous zirconium carbide (ZrC) is prepared by sodium carbonate activation of commercial ZrC. As a result of sodium carbonate activation, there is a tremendous increase in the surface area (from 0.6 to 96m2g−1) and chemisorption capability of commercial ZrC. This ZrC is incorporated into Vulcan carbon XC-72R by solid-state reaction using intermittent microwave heating (IMH) method, and Pt nanoparticles were dispersed by microwave-assisted polyol process. The electrocatalyst samples were characterized by PXRD, BET, SEM, TEM, XPS and their performance for oxygen reduction reaction was studied in 0.1molL−1 HClO4 aqueous electrolyte by cyclic voltammetry and rotating ring disk electrode. The XRD, XPS and TEM results indicate well dispersed ZrC and Pt nanoparticles over Vulcan carbon XC-72R. When the activated ZrC combined with platinum, the resulting composite electrocatalyst showed higher activity for oxygen reduction which exceeds that of the commercial Pt/C catalyst of similar metal loading. Our approach shows that sodium carbonate activation is an effective method for the activation of metal carbides, which is essential for tuning the microstructural properties of electrocatalyst support.

Generation and Characterization of Zirconium Carbide Nanoparticles by Wire Explosion Process

Zirconium carbide nanoparticles were produced by wire explosion process by exploding zirconium conductor in methane ambiance. X-ray diffraction studies of the particles produced by wire explosion process confirm the formation of cubic zirconium carbide particles. The results of the study indicates that unreacted zirconium content in the zirconium carbide powder could be reduced by exploding the zirconium conductor by depositing energy of three times the sublimation energy in 100kPa methane pressure. Selected area electron diffraction (SAED) analysis confirms that particles produced are cubic zirconium carbide particles. Transmission electron microscopy analysis indicates that zirconium carbide nanoparticles are spherical in shape and the particle size distribution follows log-normal distribution with the mean particle size of about 20nm. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.M2012021]

Mechanochemically activated synthesis of zirconium carbide nanoparticles at room temperature: A simple route to prepare nanoparticles of transition metal carbides

Mechanically activated syntheses of zirconium carbides (ZrC x ) nanoparticles have been performed via ball milling of Zr powder with toluene. It has been found that the milling time can be used to tune the ratio x of C to Zr. The spark plasma sintering of the ZrC x nanoparticles has shown that the densification can be achieved at a considerably reduced temperature of 1200 °C. This ball milling procedure has been tried to successfully synthesize the nanoparticles of WC x , TiC x , and NbC x , demonstrating that it is a potential route to prepare the nanoparticles of transition metal carbides.