Читать книгу Amorphous Nanomaterials - Lin Guo - Страница 24

Although many studies have confirmed the significance of amorphous nanomaterials, their development is still in their infancy. For example, it is widely believed that amorphous materials have SRO, but their atomic arrangement cannot be accurately defined, even with the help of AC-TEM. Intense debates regarding whether they could exhibit medium-range ordering at the nanometer scale or even LRO are still ongoing. In addition, compared with the highly ordered arrangement of atoms in crystals, the atomic disorder of amorphous materials endows them highly unsaturated centers on the surface. If the unsaturated centers were all active sites, the catalytic performance would be improved by an order of magnitude. However, the reported research has not achieved such an improvement. Therefore, as an emerging discipline, the study of amorphous nanomaterials is of great significance.

At the same time, the synthesis of amorphous nanomaterials is only in the exploration stage. Most of the as-reported synthesis method is incomprehensive and non-systematic, while systematical and universal methods are needed. Limited by the isotropic feature of amorphous structure, the morphology of naturally growing amorphous materials are spherical particles. If 1D materials are expected, an external force must be applied to confine the growth direction, for example, electrospinning and chemical vapor deposition. The preparation of 3D materials with regular morphology can only rely on the hard template method and then etching the template to obtain a polyhedron frame or shell. The template-free self-growth of amorphous materials with specific and programmed morphology is extremely difficult. Thus, researches on the design and synthesis of amorphous nanomaterial should be comprehensively reviewed to summarize the laws. In addition, the study of the relationship between structure and related properties of the amorphous nanomaterials and their potential applications will greatly promote the development of amorphous nanomaterials.