Invited Paper NS+BI-MoM3
Towards Emergence of New Function by Engineering Materials: Colloidal Nanocrystals as Building Blocks for Nanocomposites and Assemblies
Monday, November 9, 2009, 9:00 am, Room L
Increasing attention has been devoted to the properties of materials in nanophase state, which are highly dependent on their size and shape and can be dramatically different from those of the corresponding bulk phase materials. Such geometry dependent characteristics result essential for design novel functional materials with tailored characteristics, revealing a high impact on fundamental aspects as well as on potential technology applications. Fine tuning of the nanomaterial electronic, optical, magnetic, thermal, mechanical, and chemical properties opens possibilities for their wide applications in several technological fields. In this sense the basic nanosized building blocks of such complex structures play a crucial role and the extent to which nanocrystals (NCs) and nanoparticles (NPs) can be fabricated, engineered and their properties tailored is central. Chemical strategies are now able to provide highly processable NCs, possessing an adjustable interface with the external environment, able to tune their specific chemical reactivity towards the surroundings1. Equally decisive is the scheme used to convey the instruction for assembly and organization into the inorganic NPs. Assembly can be spontaneous (self assembly), guided by the intrinsic information coded into the building blocks, and/or driven by external stimuli, templates, chemical and/or physical forces.1,2 The complexity of the formed structures depend on a variety of factors, ranging from the type of the single structural component, the length scale along which the structured material is achieved, the kind of mechanism ultimately involved for the creation of the final architectures. The NC based structures, either hierarchical organized or nanocomposite in nature, can show original emergent properties which cannot be readily envisioned from the building block original properties, while can be observed to arise in the originated mesostructure of nano-objects.3 The potential to design and fabricate such nanostructured materials with unprecedented functionality open the routes for applications in biomedical, optical, electronic, catalytic and light energy conversion systems.1. E. Fanizza, P. D. Cozzoli, M. L. Curri, M. Striccoli, E. Sardella, A. Agostiano (2007) Adv.Funct. Mater. 17 201-211.
2. M. L. Curri, R. Comparelli, N. Depalo, E. Fanizza, M. Striccoli “Patterning and Assembling of Inorganic Nanocrystals” in Nanomaterials: Inorganic And Bioinorganic Perspectives Edited by C. M. Lukehart and R. A. Scott, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pp 327-356,
3. J. Y.Kim, C. Ingrosso, V. Fakhfouri, M. Striccoli, A. Agostiano, M. L. Curri, J. Brugger (2009) Small 5 1051-1057.