What are nanoparticles and how are they made?
A simple way of seeing this is by imagining tennis balls that are squeezed down to a few billionths of a meter. The particles are rounded because they try to minimize the surface energy as much as possible; any edges will make things more energetic since typically nature follows the path of least resistance the particles tend to form colloids, or spheres with as few edges as possible. It is possible though, to direct the growth of nanoparticles into various shapes such as cubes, and tetrahedrons. We will concern ourselves with only colloidal nanoparticles for the moment.The nanoparticles have a large surface area compared with the total volume. The surface area to volume ratio is interesting because chemical reactions typically occur on surfaces, so nanoparticles that have a high surface to energy ratio can be used in many interesting ways, such as in catalysis. One teaspoon of nanoparticles might weigh only 200 mg, but because of their shape and the large amount of surface area the te
