Chemical Synthesis of Hybrid Nanoparticles Based on Metal–Metal Oxide Systems

This chapter focuses on the well-known techniques for the growth of metal–metal oxide nanostructured systems from the viewpoint of energy and related applications. The combination of metal nanoparticles with transition metal oxides can generate multifunctional semiconductor materials with properties such as enhanced light absorption, suppressed charge carrier recombination, improved adsorption and catalysis, improved redox properties, and so on. Detailed discussion on the synthetic pathways including hydrothermal, sol–gel, photochemical, co-precipitation, sonochemical, and microwave processes, applied to specific systems such as TiO₂, ZnO, Fe₂O₃, CuO, and so forth is presented.