Mixtures of nanoparticles and nanocomposites, manufactured using nanoparticles as building blocks, have unique properties owing to small particle/grain size, and large interface area between individual nano-sized constituents. These properties have a great potential to improve performance of drugs, biomaterials, catalysts, energetic materials etc. However, to fully employ this potential, nanoparticles should be mixed at nanoscale level, which is a difficult task because they tend to form aggregates on the order of microns. Therefore, a major challenge in utilizing nanoparticles is to achieve their mixing at nano-scale level.

The objective of this study is to explore the homogeneity of nanoparticle mixtures obtained using a dry mixing technique, Magnetically Assisted Impact Mixing (MAIM). The MAIM process is an environmentally friendly dry mixing process, which eliminates current downstream processing (drying) time associated with the wet chemistry mixing methods. In this technique nanopowders are placed along with sub-millimeter sized magnets in a container inside a coil producing an oscillating magnetic field. The magnets undergo rotational and translational motion and promote rearrangements of nano-particles between agglomerates of different materials, mixing them at scales below the aggregate size. Multiple parameters were studied to optimize the MAIM process: magnet size, magnet to sample weight ratio, mixing time, and electromagnetic field strength. The characterization of the resulting nanoparticle mixtures were conducted using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) equipped with an EDS (energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy).