Nanocrystals: Solution-based synthesis and applications as nanocatalysts

Abstract

Nanocrystals are emerging as key materials due to their novel shape- and size-dependent chemical and physical properties that differ drastically from their bulk counterparts. The main challenges in this field remain rationally controlled synthesis and large scale production. This article reviews recent progress in our laboratory related to solution-based synthesis of various nanostructures, including zero-dimensional (0-D) nanocrystals, 1-D nanowires and nanorods, hollow structures, and superlattice materials. On the other hand, the essential goal for nanoresearchers is to achieve industrial applications of nanostructured materials. In the past decades, these fascinating materials have been widely used in many promising fields such as nanofabrication, nanodevices, nanobiology, and nanocatalysis. Herein, we focus on their applications as nanocatalysts and try to illustrate the main problems and future directions in this area based on our recent endeavors in catalytic applications of nanocrystals.