Chemical routes to nanostructured materials

Routes to Nanostructured Inorganic Materials with Potential for Solar Energy Applications

Recent advances in nanotechnology could facilitate the production of cheaper solar cells. This review describes synthetic routes to various nanostructured materials that are potentially useful in photovoltaic applications. We have focused on materials that are based on earth abundant elements and/or those that are held to have lower toxicity. Methods to synthesize binary chalcogenides with vari...

Chemical processes for the synthesis of nanostructured materials

Nanostructured materials with biomimetic recognition abilities for chemical sensing

Binding features found in biological systems can be implemented into man-made materials to design nanostructured artificial receptor matrices which are suitable, e.g., for chemical sensing applications. A range of different non-covalent interactions can be utilized based on the chemical properties of the respective analyte. One example is the formation of coordinative bonds between a polymeriza...

Nanostructured Thermoelectric Materials: From Superlattices to Nanocomposites

Energy transport in nanostructures differs significantly from macrostructures because of classical and quantum size effects on energy carriers. Experimental results show that the thermal conductivity values of nanostructures such as superlattices are significantly lower than that of their bulk constituent materials. The reduction in thermal conductivity led to a large increase in the thermoelec...

Molecular Routes to Materials in New York

A symposium entitled “Molecular Routes to Materials” was held in New York City at the 4th Chemical Congress of the North American Continent in August, 1991. The talks focused on synthetic and mechanistic studies of the formation of metals, borides, nitrides, carbides, oxides, and compound semiconductors from molecular precursors. Dr. Joel Miller (DuPont) outlined recent success in obtaining mag...