Nanophase uses an array of fully-scaled proprietary and patent protected technologies for the production of nanoparticles. Specific manufacturing technologies are chosen to provide each nanomaterial with desired properties for use in selected application environments.
The traditional and most common manufacturing methods used at Nanophase are plasma based. The Physical Vapor Synthesis (PVS) and NanoArc® Synthesis (NAS) methods employ transferred and non-transferred electric arcs to vaporize precursor materials, which are then carefully condensed to produce nanoparticles with desired properties. These methods have been used to produce both simple and complex, multi-component mixed metal oxides.
These manufacturing technologies produce discrete and non-aggregated materials which are both fully crystalline and fully dense. The particles produced by these methods also tend to have low aspect ratios.
Nanophase has also developed methods to produce materials having clean, fully reacted surfaces. This leads to particles having very high zeta-potentials and high dispersion stabilities. This is an enabling aspect of these technologies, as it allows for the production of materials that can readily be dispersed in a wide variety of highly stable liquid and solid formats that are ready for customer use.