Design a Hencken burner with uniform temperature distribution for characterizing oxide precursors of ternary cathode materials

The ambiguous physicochemical properties of nickel-cobalt-manganese ternary composite oxides (NCMO) hinder proper control of calcination process and impede accurate techno-economic analysis. In particularly, a critical step of the oxide precursor route through the flame synthesis approach for manufacturing ternary cathode materials is the production of NCMO. Current burners for synthesizing the NCMO are based primarily on co-flow burner with nonuniform temperature profiles, resulting in few controls of boundary conditions for manufacturing materials. To address the above issues, the present study proposes to design a new flame synthesis platform based on a Hencken flat-flame burner, to achieve stable flame with uniform temperature field. By integrating with ultrasonic atomization and quenching system, the proposed flame synthesis platform enables efficient production of NCMO precursors. Examination of the key experimental parameters reveals that an equivalence ratio of 0.6 and a precursor solution concentration of 1.0 ​mol/L yields proper NCMO precursors with 1–2 ​μm spherical diameters. The key physicochemical properties of the produced NCMO precursors are characterized, and in particularly, the oxidation states of several typical precursors were determined. The present study shows that the flame synthesis platform based on the flat-flame Hencken burner has great potential in the preparation of functional nanoparticles with multi-metal elements in an efficient and controllable manner.