Multidimensional nature of fluidized nanoparticle agglomerates.

We show that fluidized nanoparticle agglomerates are hierarchical fractal structures with three fractal dimensions: one characterizing sintered aggregates formed during nanoparticle synthesis, one that is also found in stored agglomerates and represents unbroken agglomerates, and one describing the large agglomerates broken during fluidization. This has been possible by using spin-echo small-angle neutron scattering-a relatively novel technique that, for the first time, allowed to characterize in situ the structure of fluidized nanoparticle agglomerates from 21 nm to ∼20 μm. The results show that serial agglomeration mechanisms in the gas phase can generate nanoparticle clusters with different fractal dimensions, contradicting the common approach that considers fluidized nanoparticle agglomerates as single fractals, in analogy to the agglomerates formed by micron-sized particles. This work has important implications for the fluidization field but also has a wider impact. Current studies deal with the formation and properties of clusters where the building blocks are particles and the structure can be characterized by only one fractal dimension. However, fluidized nanoparticle agglomerates are low-dimensional clusters formed by higher-dimensional clusters that are formed by low-dimensional clusters. This multifractality demands a new type of multiscale model able to capture the interplay between different scales.