Chapter 3 - Characterization Tools and Techniques for Nanomaterials

Abstract

Nanomaterials have gained a lot of interest because of to their outstanding properties and have found wide applications, ranging from energy, environment, medical field, etc. Currently, there are various nanomaterials that are under study as a result of their application in energy conversion and storage devices. To get the required property profile of the nanomaterials for certain application, one has to characterize the nanomaterials with available characterization techniques. The characterization and measurement of various properties is an interesting challenge that the research community is facing. The measurement of physical properties, such as size, surface area, morphology, optical properties, etc., and chemical properties, such as composition, surface composition, electrochemistry, oxidation state, etc., is very important in the case of nanomaterials. In view of this, in this chapter, details of the various characterization techniques used for the analysis of nanomaterials, such as transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectra, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and particle size analysis, are presented, with suitable examples from the field of energy storage and conversion materials.