Stability and dispersion mechanism of Copper powders

Abstract

Abstract The stability and dispersion of Copper (Cu) powders in an aqueous medium impacts their performances. Thus the Cu powders suspensions were prepared by adding different stabilizers -sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate (SDBS), polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP), and hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB), and the stability and dispersion was studied to find suitable stabilizer. The study systematically examined the effect of the stability of suspensions via sedimentation analysis, such as solid-liquid ratio, the concentration of stabilizer and dispersion time. The particle size, the stability of suspensions, phase composition, and microstructure of Cu powders were characterized by laser particle size analyzer, zeta potential, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Transmission electron microscope (TEM), and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results indicated that the addition of PVP increased the stability of the suspension because of steric hindrance of PVP, and the formation of a thick hydration layer retards the growth and agglomeration of particles with the optimizing concentrations, dispersion time, and solid-liquid ratio 10 g/L, 30 min, and 1:25, respectively.