ABSTRACT
During the past few decades, nanoparticles (NPs) have emerged as a powerful tool for biomedical applications. For biomedical applications themselves, to obtain a stable dispersion of NPs in solution is, of course, one of the key parameters. This chapter considers the different approaches to obtain such dispersion before discussing the main characterization techniques for NPs. The main methods to obtain the size of nanoparticles include microscopic methods such as Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and imply a description of average diameter and size distribution. An important point for TEM concerns the sample preparation. In standard conditions, a deposition of a diluted solution of nanoparticles is realized on grids. For microgel nanoparticles, light scattering techniques can be considered the methods of choice for structural analysis of microgel particles. Many investigations are performed on microgels using dynamic light scattering (DLS) or static light scattering.
