Nanostructured materials

Nanostructured materials may be defined as those materials whose structural elements - clusters, crystallites or molecules - have dimensions in the 1 to 100 nm range. The explosion in both academic and industrial interest in these materials over the past decade arises from the remarkable variations in fundamental electrical, optical and magnetic properties that occur as one progresses from an `infinitely extended' solid to a particle of material consisting of a countable number of atoms. This review details recent advances in the synthesis and investigation of functional nanostructured materials, focusing on the novel size-dependent physics and chemistry that results when electrons are confined within nanoscale semiconductor and metal clusters and colloids. Carbon-based nanomaterials and nanostructures including fullerenes and nanotubes play an increasingly pervasive role in nanoscale science and technology and are thus described in some depth. Current nanodevice fabrication methods and the future prospects for nanostructured materials and nanodevices are discussed.