Spark erosion as a high-throughput method for producing bimodal nanostructured 316L stainless steel powder

A high-throughput shaker-pot spark erosion process was used to synthesize a spherical polydisperse 316L stainless steel nanopowder. Capacitance and target morphology of the shaker-pot spark erosion process were evaluated to optimize powder production. Nanopowders were assessed using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission scanning electron microscopy (TSEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and a new multispectral advanced nanoparticle tracking analysis (MANTA) technique. It was found that the chosen spark erosion dielectric, as well as capacitance, heavily impact the submicron particle size distribution and overall production rate. The distribution of the particles obtained was shown to be a wide range bimodal distribution with a small mode near 150 nm and a large mode near 50 mu m. Spark energy and time were shown to have a strong correlation with the chosen dielectric and capacitance parameters. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.