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Microwave-Assisted Synthesis of Nano-materials in Aqueous
Citation:
Baruwati, B., V. Polshettiwar, AND R. S. VARMA. Microwave-Assisted Synthesis of Nano-materials in Aqueous . Chapter 7, Aqueous Microwave Assisted Chemistry Synthesis and Catalysis, ISBN: 978-1-84973-099-0. RSC Publishing, Cambridge, Uk, 7:176-216, (2010).
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Whether it is termed a revolution or simply a continuous evolution, clearly development of new materials and their understanding on smaller and smaller length scale is at the root of progress in many areas of materials science.1 This is true in developing existing bulk materials in the nanometer (10-9 meter) region for various important applications including electronic, magnetic, catalytic, optical, environmental remediation and more. Nanomaterials by themselves are simply defined by their size, which imparts an interdisciplinary character to this field of research. Structures having at least one dimension in nanometer length are defined as nanomaterials. They might be one-dimensional like rods or tubes, two-dimensional like a sheet or three-dimensional like spheres. The interests and efforts to achieve the existing materials in the nanometer length scale come from the extraordinary physical properties of these materials when compared to their bulk counterparts. These extraordinary properties arise because of the enormous increase in the surface to volume ratio and predominance of quantum mechanical phenomena exhibited by materials in this particular length scale. There is thus a growing curiosity to understand the behavior of materials in the nano length scale and if possible to exploit the new properties exhibited by these materials purely as a consequence of the smallness of size. We could illustrate the increase of surface to volume ratio in nanomaterials by a simple example. Let us assume a cube of side 1 cm and calculate the corresponding surface to volume ratio. Area = 6x1cm2 = 6x10-4 m2 Volume = 1cm3 = 10-6 m3 S/V = 6x100/m
