Читать книгу Green Nanomaterials - Siddharth Patwardhan - Страница 18

There are many physical properties that are affected at the nanoscale, such as melting point and electronic properties. Furthermore, due to the large surface area and predominance of surface chemistry, nanomaterials are also ideal for heterogenous catalysis. The purpose of this chapter is NOT to give a complete, definitive account of all properties and applications of nanomaterials, but rather to give a flavour and thus must focus on a small selection of nanoproperties and their subsequent application.

There are two features of nanoscale materials: (1) increased surface-to-bulk volume ratio and (2) the reduction in size, which leads to the surface and quantum mechanical properties predominating over the bulk properties. Both key features are beautifully illustrated in turn by considering two optical properties of nanomaterials: the surface effect of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and the quantum mechanical effect of quantum dot fluorescence. Furthermore, the reduction in size also affects magnetic properties. These three nanoproperties will be described in this section, with the following section showing real-world applications of these specific properties.