Nanomaterials-Conventional vs. New Preparation Techniques: Moving Towards Sustainable Synthesis Methods

摘要

We live in an era in which humanity is faced with a number of difficult challenges such as reducing the dependence on petroleum reserves, minimizing the amount of by-products in manufacturing and transportation, reducing future pollution, and creating safer chemicals. More and more industrial companies are working toward achieving sustainability in all areas of their business. Catalysis is one of the ways to achieve this goal, but the scientific community needs to look beyond improving existing catalytic materials and begin to understand the fundamental principles involved to predict and create new catalytic materials for a given set of reactants and products. Nanotechnology offers a promising solution to this challenge due to rapid advancements in both synthesis and characterization techniques - experimental (e.g., high-resolution transmission electronic microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, and synchrotron-based techniques) as well as theoretical considerations (e.g., density functional theory).