Reaction ball milling of systems involving ionic bonds

The paper reports an attempt to understand the mechanism of mechanochemical synthesis by mechanical milling. Towards this goal, a systematic investigation of the mechanochemistry of the ionic compounds has been carried out. We have studied the nature of replacement reactions in solid CuSO4·5H2O with Fe, Mg and Sn. The study focuses on structural characterization at different stages of milling to gain insight into the process of synthesis leading to the formation of nanocrystalline copper.