“Principles of Nano Chemistry

and Nano Technology”

Associate Professor in Chemistry

P.G. and Research Department of
Chemistry
A.V.V.M Sri Pushpam College, Poondi,
Thanjavur Dt,
• “there is an important message here for all of
us to nurture young talent for all scientific
research work, particularly in nanoscience and
nanotechnology. With 540 million youth in
India, we have to hone skills of youth at the
graduate, post-graduate and Ph.D levels, " Mr.
Kalam said.
•
• - He rued that despite doing exceedingly
well in the field of research in advanced
topics right from the late 1950s, India
lagged behind in implementing the
research findings on a commercial level.

• "This should not happen vis-à-vis areas like

nanotechnology ..”
 History
China- 1000 years ago – gold nano
particles as inorganic dye to
introduce red color in ceramic
porcelains

Faraday –1857- electrolysis – gold

nano particles – colloid.
 Contd …
• Colloidal gold was and is still used for medical
treatment of arthritis.

• Number of diseases were diagnosed by

sending colloidal gold with the spinal liquid.
Diffrence between nano and bulk?

Nano – Particles of size between 1nm to 50

nm

Bulk – Particles of size larger than 60nm

 Nano-science & Nano-technology
Nanoscience is actually Materials Science at atomic level.

Nano-technology is Controlled manufacturing and

characterization of materials with predetermined and artificially
modified atomic and molecular structure.
To accomplish that one needs to manipulate with atoms and
molecules at nanoscale.
The word “nano” relates to the dimension scale comparable
with 1 nm = 10-9m.
Typical size of nano-objects ranges from 1 to 100 nm
         
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Less than a Nanometer Thousands of A million Billions of

nanometer Ten shoulder- nanometers nanometers nanometers
Individual to-shoulder Biological An ant  is A two meter
atoms are up hydrogen cells, like millions of tall male is two
to a few tenths atoms (blue these red nanometers billion
of a nanometer balls) span 1 blood cells, across nanometers
in diameter nanometer. have   tall
  DNA diameters in
  molecules are the range of
about 2.5nm thousands of
wide nanometers
 
 Characteristics of Nanoscalar materials: <L> <<100nm!

 Size : 10-9m
 Area : 10-18 m2
 Volume : 10-27 m3
 Mass : 10-24kg
 Specific surface area : 106 m2/kg
 % of chemical bonding sites on the surface : 20-50
 Large Gibbs Free Energy : Ease of sintering/
Ease of dissolution
 Surface forces and Brownian motion become increasingly
significant
 You cannot see or touch discrete nanoscalar materials
Nano-synthesis Technology
Research
Top-down versus Bottom-up
Properties
Physical Properties
1. Refractive index

2. Melting & boiling points

3. Density

4. Surface Area

Chemical properties
1. Catalytic properties

2. Solubility

3. Stability

4. Reactivity
Examples of material creation
Size Dependent
Absorption

Absorption spectra of particles with different sizes: with a decrease in particle size, the
wavelength of the absorption maximum shifts to lower wavelength.
Size Dependent Emission
Surface Area

Surface area to volume ratio

increases in nanomaterials

A large particle, when divided

into many small particles,
results in exposure of more
surface, thus increasing the
surface area to volume ratio
 Types of nanomaterials
• 0 D Sphere
• 1 D Nanorods
• 2 D Sheets
• 3 D Crystals, cubes
 Carbon – The Magic Element
• One of the first elements known to mankind
• Latin word "carbo" meaning "charcoal "
• Allotropes of Carbon – Amorphous carbon, Graphite
and Diamond

Graphite Diamond
 What are Carbon Nanomaterials?
• Fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, Graphite whiskers,
Cones and Nanocrystalline diamond
 Fullerenes – Basics

• Discovery – 1985 – Kroto, Smalley and Curl –

Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996

• Fullerenes are large carbon-cage molecules. By

far the most common one is C60 -- also called a
"buckyball"-- but some other relatively
common ones are C70, C76, and C84 (there are
plenty of others too)
 History of Fullerenes
• Truncated icosahedron was known for more than 500 years
• 1960’s – soccer-shaped Corannulene was synthesized
• 1970 – Eiji Osawa proposed that a molecule made up of sp2
hybridized carbons could have the soccer structure
• 1973 - Russian scientists independently proposed the structure
of C60 and predicted some properties and also of C20 – the
smallest fullerene

Corannulene – Buckybowl – C20H10

• Fulleren –pentagon and hexagon
An international collaboration

Harry Kroto (U Sussex), Bob Curl (left) and Richard Smalley (right)
synthesis of interstellar (Rice U, Texas),Cluster chemistry from a
molecules laser-supersonic vaporization beam

Together, the two groups attempted to simulate the

generation of C-containing molecules in the stars. In 1985,
they discovered C60, a new allotrope of carbon.
The compound was very stable and accompanied by
amounts of C70 (m/z 840).
 Fullerene – Structure

C60, high symmetry, Smalley’s paper model, Single bonds in red,

fused pentagon & Kroto & Curl add C=C’s C=C in yellow
hexagons
 Discovery of Fullerenes
Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996
Curl

O’Brien Heath
Smalley

Kroto
Why “Bucky Ball” or buckminsterfullerene?

Inventor of the
geodesic dome

Key thinker, visionary, inventor of the 20th

century, impacting architecture, math, art,
philosophy, religion, physics, literature,
R. Buckminster Fuller urban development & design, industry &
1895-1983 technology.
 Buckyball Structure
Fullerenes are polyeders built up by
coordinated carbon atoms with 12 pentagons
and (n) hexagons, where the minimum for n is
20. Fullerenes fulfil the EULER's theorem,
where a polyeder built up from pentagons and
hexagons has to contain exactly 12 pentagons,
to build a closed structure. Following this rule,
the dodekaheder with 20 carbon atoms is the
smallest possible fullerene.

For the stability of the structure, it is important that no pentagons

are side by side. This is described by the Isolated Pentagon Rule
(IPR). If two pentagons are adjacent, the tension of the binding is
increasing and the structure is not any more energetically stable.
Discovery of CNT

• Discovered by Dr.Sumio Ijima,

NEC, Japan in 1991

• Discovery accidental during the synthesis of

fullerenes
(C60)
• Rapid increase in publications in the last 15
years –More than 15000 publications involving
CNTs in the literature

• Generated great interest in several applications

including field emission devices, nanoscale
transistors, tips for scanning microscopy or
components for composite materials
What are carbon nanotubes?

• CNT is a new molecular form of carbon and

configurationally equivalent to two
dimensional graphene sheet rolled into a tube

• Quite distinct from diamond and graphite

• Novel nanostructures and the most commonly

used building blocks of nanotechnology

• Two Types
Single - wall CNT (SWCNT)
Multi-wall CNT (MWCNT)
SWCNT
• Single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) –
consist of a single tube of graphite formed by
rolling a sheet of graphene into a cylinder
along an (m,n) lattice vector in the graphene
plane.
• The (m,n) indices determine the diameter and
chirality – the key parameters of CNT
• Depending on the chirality, CNTs can be
either metals or semiconductors
Some SWCNT with different
chiralities

Armchair

Zigzag

Chiral
 MWCNT
• Multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) – consist
of several concentric tubes of graphite fitted
one inside the other
Some special properties of CNTs
• High surface area

• Extraordinary mechanical properties - Tensile

strength is one hundred time more than
steel.Young’s modulus is over 1 Tera Pascal. It
is stiff as diamond. The estimated tensile
strength is 200 Gega Pascal.

• Thermal conductivity is higher than diamond

• Electrical conductivity similar to copper

• Can be metallic or semiconducting

 Applications:
Catalysis

It binds to HIV

Antibacterial activity-Destroy the cell walls

of bacterium

Envirmental - odour removal

Surface enchanced Raman spectra

Coloring agents –ancient days

Drug delivery , unknown action in the body.

To destroy cancer cells

Electronics

optics
Metallic Nanoparticles
Synthesis
 Other applications
• Solar cells
• Sun screen lotions
• Paints TiO2
• Pt-Ru electrocatalyst for fuel cell
Thank
You All !