[curious77]

I want to grind iron oxide nanoparticles to fine powder for adsorption studies. But I am worried about their dispersion in air during grinding the nanoparticles in mortar and pestle. What method may be safe for grinding of nanoparticles.

[nj_bartel]

I admittedly have little knowledge of nanoparticles, but I believe nanoparticles are created as such, not ground to that state.  The concept of grinding nanoparticles smaller with a mortar and pestle seems kind of silly to me.

[curious77]

I dried my sample (iron oxide nanoparticles coated with polymer) in oven. so they got agglomerated. Can they be used as such for adsorption studies? or they need to be fine powdered?

[Grundalizer]

Are you trying to study their effects on living biological organisms?  "Absorption" in what context?  I've been reading a lot of articles lately about inhaled particles causing cancer or severe lung problems, I wouldn't be huffing the stuff

[curious77]

@ Grundalizer
I want to study adsorption of metal ions (not in vivo) by coated iron oxide nanoparticles prepared by coprecipitation method. I think powder form will have large surface area, so I am asking about grinding. Is it possible that instead  of grinding we sonicate the sample (iron oxide nanoparticles).

[lotharien]

grinding makes the particles small , but not such small as a nanoparticle. using ultrasonic methods you will have nano particles. when using nanoparticles you need special protection masks. they are such small that can pass over normal masks .

[408]

Dried nanoparticles often agglomerate into blobs that are useless for characterization.  So you must grind them to break up the aggregates.  I have always done this under hexane.  No dusts, and you can easily transfer slurries to whatever you need.  The hexane then evaps off easily.

[canadapolar]

As I wrote already in a former post, I work since a few days with ultrasound to disperse and grind nanoparticles (CNTs). I'm working in batch and with sonication flow cell. The following article helped me quite well:http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/16/69/96/PDF/1048.pdf

More information - especially for other materials than CNT - would be appreciated.
Thanks guys!