Electrothermal-chemical synthesis of nanocrystalline aluminum nitride using a metal vapor pulsed plasma jet

A relatively new process, electrothermal-chemical (ETC) synthesis, is proposed and tested for synthesizing nanocrystalline aluminum nitride (AlN) and aluminum powders. The ETC synthesis employed a plasma gun especially adapted for material synthesis. The plasma gun is powered by high magnitude current pulse (100 kA flowing for 1.2 ms) and produces pulsed, high-velocity metal vapor plasma jets. The pulsed plasma jet is directed into a reaction chamber which is filled with room temperature atmospheric pressure nitrogen (N/sub 2/) or helium (He) gas reacting with the metal vapor plasma jet. Transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction have been applied to characterize the synthesized materials and confirmed that the material contained nanocrystalline aluminum (Al) and AlN whose particle size ranging 30-120 nm.