Production of Zinc Oxide Nano-Crystallites Using Thermal Decomposition of Prealloyed Brass Powder

One of the complicated challenges during sintering of the prealloyed brass powder metallurgy products is losing or evaporating of zinc. In the present work a novel, simple and fast method for producing various micro and nanoparticles of ZnO in the air atmosphere was introduced. It was shown that the presence of Cu in the brass matrix strongly affect the growth morphology of the synthesized ZnO through the controlling of the partial pressure of zinc. Regarding the simplicity of the method, and the economic advantages, the described method is likely to be of interest in industrial-scale applications.