ABSTRACT
Nowadays, nanomaterials make their way in a wide variety of applications where downsizing truly brings about new or improved features that can be immediately exploited for some practical use. These applications encompass fields as disparate as medicine, biology, energy conversion and storage, catalysis, sensing, nanocomposite engineering, and cosmetics, to name the main ones. Nevertheless, a foreseen technological revolution triggered by a ubiquitous infiltration of nanomaterials into an everyday life has not happened yet. One of the possible reasons of this is the lack of straightforward and reproducible synthetic protocols providing large amounts of nanoparticles (NPs) and thus capable of efficient up-scaling to fulfil industrial needs. Another reason might be the growing concern that NPs will become a new threat to the environment.
In this chapter, the critical feature of NPs science and engineering dealing with their high-throughput preparation will be discussed, focusing on their wet-chemical syntheses. The chapter gives a broad summary of the main types of synthetic approaches developed to date, which could be useful to scientists and engineers approaching the fabrication of NPs aiming at their use in large-scale applications. The discussion of the main large-scale methods begins with the simplest one-batch heat-up synthesis approach, followed by hot-injection methods, and ends with more sophisticated continuous flow syntheses. In each section, wherever possible, the discussion starts with simpler compounds (e.g., one-component noble metal NPs) and then moves on to more complex structures (from binary to ternary and even quaternary compounds, which are mainly represented by metal oxides and chalcogenides).
