Symposium NM6—Nanoscale Materials and Devices by High-Temperature Gas-Phase Processes

Nanostructured materials made by high temperature gas-phase processes (such as flame, plasma or hot-wall reactors) are highly attractive for incorporation into industrial products. This is because such materials can be made rapidly with high purity in one step and at low cost. In fact, proper tuning of synthesis conditions and/or combining multiple gas-phase reactors/stages even allows for the synthesis of complex structures such as multi-component oxides, metals, encapsulated or surface-functionalized particles and nanoparticulate films. Nanomaterial synthesis and processing methods as well as applications of the resulting materials, however, are still in the rapid developing phase. Specifically, there are intense research efforts towards the development of devices using such nanomaterials aiming at several fields of application, including energy conversion systems, structural coatings, thermal barriers, nanocomposites, biomaterials, nanomedicine and sensing. Fundamentally, there is a great need to understand the nucleation and growth processes of condensed phase materials in the gas phase so that their physical and chemical properties can be precisely controlled and tailored towards a particular application. In-situ diagnostics are extremely challenging due to high temperatures and particle concentrations prevailing in such aerosol reactors. Practically, greater efforts are required to investigate the potentials of the product nanomaterials and their incorporation into devices aiming to economically address the challenges of their translation to industrial and commercial products. Here, knowledge developed in related research areas, e.g. combustion and aerosols for fundamentals and diagnostics or microfabrication for device integration, should be transferred to high temperature material synthesis. Contributions from these fields are especially encouraged to stimulate interdisciplinary discussions.

This symposium will cover processes for synthesis of nanoparticles and related 2D and 3D structures and devices. Contributions on the performance of these materials in various applications (e.g. catalysis, energy conversion and storage, biomedical materials, optics, electronics, nanomedicine) are welcome as well as papers on process fundamentals, computational modeling, diagnostics, design and scale-up.