On Sept. 10, the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials announced that one of its teams headed by Dr. Kim Deok-jong successfully developed a technology that can select and measure the density of minute amounts of silver nano lines and particles that exist in water.
The research team succeeded in determining the type of silver nano materials with the oxidation potential values created when they are oxidized in an electrochemical manner for 1 minute after attaching nano materials, which exist in water solutions, to electrodes for 10 minutes, and in measuring the density of silver nano materials with current values. It is the first time to develop a technique to recognize the kind and density of silver nano materials at the same time.
The existing method to create high-frequency inducted plasmas allows researchers to measure the density of silver nano materials without determining their types. Since a preconditioning process that ionizes silver nano materials by melting them with nitric acid is required, it is impossible to measure the density on the spot. It normally takes more than one day.
The new tech that can distinguish silver nano lines and particles from nano materials is likely to be usable especially in the industry that manufactures high-quality transparent electrodes.
In addition, it will be much easier to monitor silver nano materials in valleys, rivers, and seas. With the introduction of different kinds of silver nano products, much attention is being paid to how the strong antibacterial characteristics of silver nano materials affect the environment and the human body. Therefore, the newly-developed method is expected to help researchers recognize the kind and density of silver nano materials on the spot.
The research findings were recently published online by Analyst, a scientific journal published by Royal Society of Chemistry.
