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Nanoparticles

Revision as of 20:51, 1 January 2019 by NRJC (talk | contribs)

Key Stage 4

Meaning

Nanoparticles are small clumps of atoms which are between 1 and 100 nanometres (billionths of a metre) in length, width or height.

About Nanoparticles

A Hydrogen atom has a radius of 0.1nanometres so 10 Hydrogen atoms lined up can make one nanometre. A nanoparticle may have a width of as little as 10 atoms or as many as 1000 atoms. (NB Hydrogen is being used as a comparison for the width and most nanoparticles are made of other types of atom.)
A substance that is broken down into nanoparticles may have very different properties to large amounts of the substance.
The surface area to volume ratio of nanoparticles is much higher than large volumes of the same substance. It is this large surface area compared to the volume that gives it the different properties.
In 'bulk' materials a very small proportion of atoms exist on the surface of the material. However, for nanoparticles a much larger proportion of atoms exist on the surface allowing those particles to interact with others around it.