Ball milling is a comminution and activation technique in which a powder is agitated together with hard balls inside a rotating or oscillating vessel. The energy is transferred at the collisions, so the size reduction and the defect density both depend on the ball-to-powder ratio and on the rotation speed [1]. A long enough run refines the crystallite size into the nanometre range and introduces a large density of grain boundaries [2]. In a reactive system the same collisions bring fresh surfaces together and drive a solid-state reaction without a solvent [3]. The contamination from the milling media is the practical limit, since the wear of the balls enters the product [4]. The process is difficult to scale because the specific energy of a laboratory mill falls sharply as the vessel diameter grows [5].
- comminution
- high-energy milling
- crystallite refinement
- solid-state reaction
- ball-to-powder ratio
- contamination
- scale-up
Materials Engineering and Processing·Mechanical Engineering·Engineering·Physical Sciences
References
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- Zhang, L.; Tsuzuki, T.; Wang, X.; Preparation of cellulose nanofiber from softwood pulp by ball milling. Cellulose 2015, 22, 1729-1741, 10.1007/s10570-015-0582-6.