Abstract

Microfluidics, A Versatile Tool to Produce High Quality Nanomaterials in Continuous Flow

Victor Sebastian, Full Professor, University of Zaragoza

In the last decade, the synthesis of nanomaterials with controlled size, shape and composition has received great interest due to their unique properties, enhancing their application in a plethora of fields: biomedicine, molecular diagnosis, biosensing, catalysis, energy, optics and electronics. Consequently, the controlled synthesis of nanomaterials has attracted significant attention because their properties are directly determined by their morphological and chemical features. However, there are urgent problems originated from very recent and practical demands in nanomaterial synthesis and the not straightforward scale-up of the successful laboratory-adapted protocols to an industrial level. This lecture will provide an overview of the adoption of microfluidic flow chemistry in the synthesis of inorganic, organic and hybrid nanomaterials. Microfluidics allows a novel process control window of well-defined nanomaterials, where the counterparts produced in conventional batch-type reactors are replicated but with an excellent control in size distribution, shape, and chemical composition.