Elements Nanoparticles

Elements Nanoparticles List

Elemental nanoparticles are artificially manufactured micro-particles with a size of no more than 100nm. Common elements are C, Au, Cu, Fe, Zn, Ti, rare earth elements and so on. The morphology of elemental nanoparticles may be ceramic particles, metal particles, carbon particles, polymers, and latexes. Elemental nanoparticles are increasingly used in medicine, sunscreen cosmetics, catalysts, and biological materials.

Figure 1. Common elements of elemental nanoparticles.

Applications:

• Catalyst carrier: Some metal nanoparticles are magnetic. Classic heterogeneous catalysts can be transformed into a new type of catalyst with core-shell structure with magnetic nanoparticles as the core and catalytic material as the shell. Because the carrier is nano-scale, it is more conducive to make up for the loss of homogeneous catalyst in terms of kinetics caused by heterogeneity.
• Biomarkers: Gold nanoparticles have high electron density and good contrast under the electron microscope, so they are very suitable as markers for electron microscopy testing. In immunology, gold nanoparticles can adsorb proteins stably and quickly, and the biological activity of the protein does not change significantly. It can be used as a probe to accurately locate biological macromolecules such as polysaccharides, proteins, polypeptides, antigens, hormones, nucleic acids, etc. on the cell surface and in cells, and can also be used for routine immunodiagnosis and immunohistochemical localization, so it can be used in clinical diagnosis and Drug testing and other aspects have been widely used.
• Antiviral coating: The antibacterial properties of copper nanoparticles have always attracted attention. Embedding copper nanoparticles into polymer fibers through a melt extrusion process has an antibacterial effect that lasts longer than many other antibacterial fabrics.
• Biological applications: Selenium nanoparticles can improve the body's antioxidant capacity, enhance immunity, suppress tumors, improve the quality of livestock and poultry meat, and have the characteristics of lower toxicity than sodium selenite and high bioavailability. Suitable selenium nanoparticles can improve the growth and reproduction performance of animals, and the suitable addition amount is lower than sodium selenite.
• Sunscreen cosmetics: Nanoparticles ZnO and TiO₂ are two important and widely used physical sunscreens. Their principle of shielding ultraviolet rays is to absorb and scatter ultraviolet rays. And ZnO has antibacterial properties, which is attributed to the fact that zinc ions can bind to the sulfhydryl groups on the proteins in the bacteria and viruses, thereby inhibiting their activity.

Classification:

• Copper nanoparticles: Copper nanoparticles have broad application prospects in nano-copper conductive pastes, microelectronic packaging materials, antibacterial plastics, dye batteries, catalysts, supercapacitors, etc. due to the good electrical conductivity characteristics of copper and the special properties of nanoparticles.
• Gold nanoparticles: Gold nanoparticles are a kind of nanomaterials that have been studied earlier. They are generally called colloidal gold in biological research. And gold nanoparticles can show different colors as their particle size changes.
• Carbon nanoparticles: Carbon nanoparticles are graphite sheets composed of a layer of carbon atoms rolled into a seamless, hollow tube at a certain angle.
• Selenium nanoparticles: Selenium is an essential trace element in human and animal life. Selenium nanoparticles are red elemental selenium with nanometer size, which is easy to absorb and has low toxicity.
• Rare earth nanoparticles: Rare earth nanoparticles are nanoparticles made of rare earth element oxides. The material has excellent luminescence properties, and has the advantages of strong energy absorption, high conversion rate, and long fluorescence lifetime.

References

1. Shaowen Cao, Franklin (Feng) Tao, Yu Tang, Yuting Li and Jiaguo Yu. Size- and shape-dependent catalytic performances of oxidation and reduction reactions on nanocatalysts [J]. Chem. Soc. Rev.,2016, 45, 4747—4765.
2. Alberto Villa, Nikolaos Dimitratos, Carine E. Chan-Thaw, Ceri Hammond, Gabriel M. Veith, Di Wang, Maela Manzoli, Laura Pratia and Graham J. Hutchings. Characterisation of gold catalysts [J]. Chem. Soc. Rev., 2016, 45, 4953-4994.
3. Haiping Huang  and Jun-Jie Zhu. The electrochemical applications of rare earth-based nanomaterials [J]. Analyst, 2019, 144, 6789-6811.