The Nature and Characterization of Nanoparticles

Abstract

AbstractNanosize particles are of fundamental and practical interest for developing advanced materials and devices and micro and nanostructures. As feature sizes shrink, nanoparticle contamination is also becoming increasingly important to achieve and maintain high product yields. In order to employ appropriate material and product development strategies, or institute preventive assembly and remediation strategies to control nanoparticle contamination, it is essential to understand the nature of nanoparticles and to characterize these particles. Particles in the size range 0.1 nm to 100 nm present unique challenges and opportunities for their imaging and characterization. Critical information for this purpose is the number and size of the particles, their morphology, and their physical and chemical structure. Because of this importance, many advances and new developments have been made in qualitative and quantitative characterization techniques for particles in this size range, including neutron holography, three dimensional atom probe imaging, ultrafast microscopy and crystallography, magnetic resonance force microscopy, and high-resolution x-ray crystallography of non-crystalline structures. It is now possible to completely characterize nanoparticles from 0.1 nm to 100 nm size. A brief review of the nature of nanoparticles is presented and recent developments in selected characterization techniques are described.