Preparation of nanocrystalline quartz via high energy ball milling

Abstract

The preparation of Nanocrystalline powder via high energy ball milling is drawing a considerable attention at the present time for its simplicity and relatively low cost. For this purpose, a high energy centrifugal ball mill was used to prepare nanocrystalline quartz powder. The bulk samples were brought from department of geology faculty of science, "Tripoli university". The samples were initially crushed by hand and then hammer milled to a granule size of about 1mm. These were finally subjected to high energy ball milling. The experimental runs involved the use of pre-determined optimum milling conditions which involved a fixed grinding time of 8 hours and steel balls to quartz weight ratio of 10:1 in dry media. X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique was used to characterize the resultant powder samples in terms of crystallite size and phase composition. The obtained X-ray diffraction analysis showed that the powder particles to be in the nanosize range of (58.58) to (68.34) nm for all samples.