Abstract
Nanoparticles (NPs) of different types, especially those of metals and metal oxides, are widely used in research and industry for a variety of applications utilising their unique physical and chemical properties. In this article, the focus is put on the fabrication of nanomaterials by means of gas-phase aggregation, also known as the cluster beam technique. A short overview of the history of cluster sources development emphasising the main milestones is presented followed by the description of different regimes of cluster-surface interaction, namely, soft-landing, pinning, sputtering and implantation. The key phenomena and effects for every regime are discussed. The review is continued by the sections describing applications of nanomaterials produced by gas aggregation. These parts critically analyse the pros and cons of the cluster beam approach for catalysis, formation of ferromagnetic and superparamagnetic NPs, applications in sensor and detection technologies as well as the synthesis of coatings and composite films containing NPs in research and industrial applications covering a number of different areas, such as electronics, tribology, biology and medicine. At the end, the current state of the knowledge on the synthesis of nanomaterials using gas aggregation is summarised and the strategies towards industrial applications are outlined.
Highlights
The fast-growing field of nanotechnology utilises nanoparticles (NPs) as building blocks for ultra-small systems and nanostructured materials with required, quite often unique, functionality [1,2,3,4,5].Within a wide spectrum of chemical and physical methods used for NP synthesis, the gas-phase aggregation technologies have reached maturity at the research level, which makes them promising to be transferred to the industrial scale in the coming years [6,7].Gas aggregation of atoms and molecules is a well-known naturally-occurring phenomenon.The examples are clouds or smoking fires
The condensation requires the lowering of temperature and precursors/germs. These conditions can be created artificially in gas aggregation sources enabling the formation of aggregates of atoms or molecules, so-called clusters [8]
The cluster beam deposition/implantation represents a very way of preparing NP-assembled systems and coatings whose structure and functional properties can versatile way of preparing NP-assembled systems and coatings whose structure and functional be tuned by beam parameters and deposition/implantation conditions
Summary
The fast-growing field of nanotechnology utilises nanoparticles (NPs) as building blocks for ultra-small systems and nanostructured materials with required, quite often unique, functionality [1,2,3,4,5].Within a wide spectrum of chemical and physical methods used for NP synthesis, the gas-phase aggregation technologies have reached maturity at the research level, which makes them promising to be transferred to the industrial scale in the coming years [6,7].Gas aggregation of atoms and molecules is a well-known naturally-occurring phenomenon.The examples are clouds or smoking fires. Within a wide spectrum of chemical and physical methods used for NP synthesis, the gas-phase aggregation technologies have reached maturity at the research level, which makes them promising to be transferred to the industrial scale in the coming years [6,7]. Gas aggregation of atoms and molecules is a well-known naturally-occurring phenomenon. The condensation requires the lowering of temperature and precursors/germs. These conditions can be created artificially in gas aggregation sources enabling the formation of aggregates of atoms or molecules, so-called clusters [8]. When reaching a size of over several tens of constituents, the cluster dimensions reach the nanometre scale and they are often called nanoparticles. In this review words “cluster” and “nanoparticle” are used as synonyms
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