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1) Aqueous Precipitation - This is the most difficult technique to master of the many ways in which nanoparticles may be produced. The reason is that there are so many unknowns to understand and manipulate i.e. the dimensionality of the experimental space is large. Several questions arise: What is the nature and the amount of reactants to use? What is the stabilizer chemical nature and concentration? Which transition state should be used to take the reaction through? How do you control particle size? along with challenges around morphology, etc. However, Cerion has these variables under control and understands the role that the various chemistries play. Why is aqueous precipitation so advantageous? Enormous yield ( > 90%), short reaction times(one to two hours), low energy costs and well-defined paths for scale up from laboratory to production. The versatility of starting materials and engineering of the particle composition without separate isolation steps is another advantage.
2) Material Phase - Cerion can make nanoparticles either in water or shift them into an organic phase. The nanoparticles do not have to be isolated, dried and then redispersed. This results in cost and time savings as well as safe handling. Our yields are typically 90%, scaleable from 1 liter to 1800 liters or even in a continuous process mode and in under 90 minutes with suspension densities of 35% (i.e. in 1000 gm of material: 350 gm would be particles, 640 grams would be solvent either water or organic material).
3) Size Control - Cerion is one of the few companies that can make monodisperse particles down to 1nm and, if desired, in the size range 1nm to 10nm. The accompanying figure illustrates this point.
4) Lattice Engineering - Cerion can replace up to 60% of the cerium ions with other transition metal ions from the periodic table and still retain a 2.5 nm crystalline cubic fluorite lattice. Lattice Engineering provides a 40x enhancement in catalytic activity over the native lattice. The literature (both patent and scientific) proclaims that this cannot be done down in the particle sizes at this particle size. See the accompanying figure of the cerium lattice planes.
5) Thermodynamics and Kinetics (i.e. high reactivity) - Most catalysts struggle to get to 1,453 micromoles of O2 per gram of catalyst - the theoretical limit for CeO2. The supported ceria catalyst in your automobile catalytic converter operates at around 800 micromoles of O2/gm and it does this with the most expensive and rare precious metals in the periodic table (e.g. Platinum, ruthenium, rhodium etc.). Cerion has achieved over 4055 micro moles of O2 per gram without the precious group metals. The kinetics or “reactivity” is 30x that of similar ceria non-lattice engineered nanoparticles.
6) “Green” as in Environmentally Safe - Cerion has a patent application for the process for recycling and reusing most of the materials that we discharged (none of which are toxic). The particle production itself has a by-product, ammonium nitrate in water, that can be used as fertilizer for crops.
7) Applications Space - Most nanoparticle companies make the particles for the end user who then engineers them to a specific application. Cerion provides integrated catalytic solutions, such as supported catalysis for synthesis of commercially important industrial chemicals, ammonia generation, drug delivery, energy storage and others.
8) Technical Breadth and Synergy - Substitution of the cerium sub-lattice at percentages greater than 60% but less than 90% gives Cerion the ability to produce 2.5 nm metal oxides of most of the transition metals in the periodic table.