• Illangakoon, Upulitha Eranka
• Kang, Qiang
• Cheong, Yuen-Ki
• Mahalingam, Suntharavathanan
• Ren, Guogang
• Edirisinghe, Mohan
• Wilson, Rory M.
• Matharu, Rupy Kaur
• Cloutman-Green, Elaine
• Calvo-Castro, Jesus
• Ciric, Lena

Abstract

© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ; Three antimicrobial nanoparticle types (AMNP0, AMNP1 and AMNP2) produced using the TesimaTM thermal plasma technology were investigated and their compositions determined using a combination of analytical methods. Scanning electron micrograph provided the morphology of these particles with observed sizes ranging from 10 – 50 nm. Whilst FTIR spectra confirmed the absence of polar bonds and organic impurities, strong Raman active vibrational bands at ca. 1604 and 1311 cm-1 ascribed to C-C vibrational motions were observed. Carbon signals resonated at δC126 ppm in solid state NMR spectra confirmed sp2 hybridised carbons were present in high concentration in two of the nanoparticle types (AMNP1 and AMNP2). X-ray powder diffraction suggested AMNP0 contains single phase WC in a high state of purity and multiple phases of WC/WC1-x were identified in both AMNP1 and AMNP2. Finally, XPS surface analyses revealed and quantified the elemental ratios in these composite formulations. ; Peer reviewed

Topics

• nanoparticle
• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• Carbon
• phase
• x-ray diffraction
• x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
• carbide
• composite
• chemical composition
• tungsten
• Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy