Module 1: Synthesis of Nanomaterials

Physical Methods
Physical Methods mainly operate on top-down strategy and are advantageous as they are free of solvent contamination and produce uniform monodisperse Nanomaterials.

Physical Methods for Nanomaterials Synthesis
High Energy Ball Milling
Inert Gas Condensation
Laser Ablation
Chemical Vapour Deposition
Sputtering

Chemical Methods
Chemical methods include chemical precipitation, chemical oxidation or reduction, formation of an insoluble gas followed by tripping, and other chemical reactions that involve exchanging or sharing electrons among atoms.

Chemical Methods for Nanomaterials Synthesis
Sol–gel method, microemulsion technique, hydrothermal synthesis, polyol synthesis, chemical vapour synthesis and plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition technique are some of the most commonly used chemical methods for the Nanomaterial synthesis.

Biological Methods
Biological Methods provides an environmentally benign, low-toxic, cost-effective and efficient protocol to synthesize and fabricate Nanomaterials. These methods employ biological systems like bacteria, fungi, viruses, yeast, actinomycetes, plant extracts, etc. for the synthesis of metal and metal oxideNanomaterials.
They can be broadly divided into three categories:
Biogenic synthesis using microorganisms
Biogenic synthesis using biomolecules as the templates
Biogenic synthesis using plant extracts

Characterization of Nanomaterials
The Characterization of Nanoparticles is a branch of Nanometrology that deals with the characterization, or measurement, of the physical and chemical properties of Nanoparticles.

Microscopic Methods generate images of individual nanoparticles to characterize their shape, size, and location. Electron microscopy and Scanning probe microscopy are the dominant methods because nanoparticles have a size below the diffraction limit of visible light, conventional optical microscopy is not useful.