Chemistry: Animation, Video, and Laboratory Activity

Included here are ceramics, metals, and metal oxide nanoparticles. In the last two decades a class of materials with a nanometer-sized microstructure have been synthesized and studied. These materials are assembled from nanometer-sized building blocks, mostly crystallites. The building blocks may differ in their atomic structure, crystallographic orientation, or chemical composition. In cases where the building blocks are crystallites, incoherent or coherent interfaces may be formed between them, depending on the atomic structure, the crystallographic orientation, and the chemical composition of adjacent crystallites.

In other words, materials assembled of nanometer-sized building blocks are microstructurally heterogeneous, consisting of the building blocks (e.g. crystallites) and the regions between adjacent building blocks (e.g. grain boundaries). It is this inherently heterogeneous structure on a nanometer scale that is crucial for many of their properties and distinguishes them from glasses, gels, etc. that are microstructurally homogeneous.3

Grain boundaries make up a major portion of the material at nanoscales, and strongly affect properties and processing. The properties of NsM deviate from those of single crystals (or coarsegrained polycrystals) and glasses with the same average chemical composition. This deviation results from the reduced size and dimensionality of the nanometer-sized crystallites as well as from the numerous interfaces between adjacent crystallites. An attempt is made to summarize the basic physical concepts and the microstructural features of equilibrium and non-equilibrium NsM.

Nanocrystallites of bulk inorganic solids have been shown to exhibit size dependent properties, such as lower melting points, higher energy gaps, and nonthermodynamic structures.4,5 In comparison to macro-scale powders, increased ductility has been observed in nanopowders of metal alloys.6,7 In addition, quantum effects from boundary values become significant leading to such phenomena as quantum dots lasers.

One of the primary applications of metals in chemistry is their use as heterogeneous catalysts in a variety of reactions. In general, heterogeneous catalyst activity is surface dependent. Due to their vastly increased surface area over macro-scale materials, nanometals and oxides are ultra-high activity catalysts. They are also used as desirable starting materials for a variety of reactions, especially solid-state routes. Nanometals and oxides are also widely used in the formation of nanocomposites. Aside from their synthetic utility, they have many useful and unique magnetic, electric, and optical properties.8,9

Transmutation of elements, conversion of one chemical element into another. The expression has both historical and contemporary significance. The transmutation of certain metals into gold by means of a substance called the philosopher's stone was one of the two most ambitious quests of the alchemists (see alchemy); the other was for the elixir of life that would cure all diseases, restore youth to the aged, and make youthfulness eternal. The possibility of finding the philosopher's stone harmonized with ideas long generally held, and honest and able men were hopeful of finding it. Now and then a charlatan professed to have found it.
In modern times it has been found that a transmutation from one element to another actually does occur in the process of natural radioactivity. Transmutation of elements can be achieved artificially by the bombardment of elements with high-speed particles by means of such machines as the cyclotron (see particle accelerator). Both artificial and natural transmutations involve changing the number of protons in the atomic nucleus. The transuranium elements are created in this manner. When a nucleus is bombarded with neutrons from an atomic pile or nuclear reactor, some of the neutrons will be absorbed, resulting in an unstable nucleus. The nucleus then becomes more stable by converting one of its neutrons into a proton by beta decay, becoming a nucleus of the next heavier element in the process.

It was in the early 1800s that John Dalton, an observer of weather and discoverer of color blindness among other things, came up with his atomic theory. Let's set the stage for Dalton's work. Less than twenty years earlier, in the 1780's, Lavoisier ushered in a new chemical era by making careful quantitative measurements which allowed the compositions of compounds to be determined with accuracy. By 1799 enough data had been accumulated for Proust to establish the Law of Constant Composition ( also called the Law of Definite Proportions). In 1803 Dalton noted that oxygen and carbon combined to make two compounds. Of course, each had its own particular weight ratio of oxygen to carbon (1.33:1 and 2.66:1), but also, for the same amount of carbon, one had exactly twice as much oxygen as the other. This led him to propose the Law of Simple Multiple Proportions, which was later verified by the Swedish chemist Berzelius. In an attempt to explain how and why elements would combine with one another in fixed ratios and sometimes also in multiples of those ratios, Dalton formulated his atomic theory.