Synthesis of Nanomaterials—I (Physical Methods)

Abstract

There are a large number of techniques available to synthesize different types of nanomaterials in the form of colloids, clusters, powders, tubes, rods, wires, thin films etc. Some of the already existing conventional techniques to synthesize different types of materials are optimized to get novel nanomaterials and some new techniques are developed. Nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary subject. There are therefore various physical, chemical, biological and hybrid techniques available to synthesize nanomaterials. It can be seen from Box 3.1 that, for each type, there is a large number of possibilities. The list is not complete but gives some commonly used techniques; some of them will be described in this and in the next two chapters. The technique to be used depends upon the material of interest, type of nanomaterial viz. zero dimensional (0-D), one dimensional (1-D) or two dimensional (2-D), their sizes and quantity.

In this chapter we shall discuss some physical as well as related methods to obtain nanomaterials.