Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Diameter
H
Functional
groups
HO
H
Catalyst
H
Defects
Wall number
Chirality
HO-C=O
FIGURE 2.1
Schematic of double-walled carbon nanotube (DWCNT) with individual characteristics, such
as defects, functional groups, and impurities.
The present chapter therefore introduces analytical concepts and tech-
niques for nanomaterials and derives recommendations for a qualified selec-
tion of characterization techniques for specific types of samples.
Future nanomaterial research should aim at the synthesis of carefully
selected and narrowly distributed material properties. This will remain a
demanding task for many years to come and will require closed feedback
loops between nanomaterial synthesis and characterization. However, only
such well-synthesized nanomaterials with narrow property distributions will
allow studying comprehensively characterized nanomaterials.  Such  well-
defined materials are of fundamental importance to achieve an efficient
nanotoxicological research on structure-response relations. Also possible
toxicity of nanocomposites, that is, nanomaterials containing nanoparticles,
will predominantly be related to the action or release of nanoparticles in or
from the material's bulk or surface. This chapter therefore focuses on the
characterization of nanoparticles and their agglomerates or aggregates.
2.2 Properties of Nanoparticles
Nanoparticles range from indistinguishable molecules with a well-defined
structure, such as fullerenes, to in principle distinguishable macromolecules
and atom clusters with a large number of individual material properties. For
such complex particles, their atomic arrangement can no longer be described
by conventional chemical notations. Instead, for a complete description, a
complex set of atom coordinates with atom type and bond state would be
necessary. It could allow numerical computing-derived particle proper-
ties such as chemical composition, impurities, structure, structure defects,
Search WWH ::




Custom Search