Nanochemistry

Nanochemistry or Nanotechnology related with the production and the reactions of nanoparticles and their compounds. It is concerned with the unique properties associated with assemblies of atoms or molecules on a scale between that of the individual building blocks and the bulk material (from 1 to 1000 nm), At this level, quantum effects can be significant, and also new ways of carrying out chemical reactions become possible. Professor Geoffrey Ozin of the University of Toronto is regarded as the father of nanochemistry. "His visionary paper "Nanochemistry - Synthesis in Diminishing Dimensions" (Advanced Materials, 1992, 4, 612) stimulated a whole new field: it proposed how the principles of chemistry could be applied to the bottom-up synthesis of materials "over all length scales" through "building block hierarchical construction principles": that is, by using molecular/nano-scale building blocks "programmed" with chemical information that will spontaneously self-assemble, in a controlled way, into structures that traverse a wide range of length scales. This was a whole new way of thinking at the time."

This science use methodologies from the synthetic chemistry and the material's chemistry to obtain nanomaterials with specific sizes, shapes, surface properties, defects, self-assembly properties, designed to accomplish specific functions and uses.