Engineered Nanomaterials: a Discussion of the Major Categories of Nanomaterials

This chapter provides a comprehensive and complete knowledge about the major categories of nanomaterials. A more comprehensive attempt constitutes classification of nanostructured materials according to their dimensionality. In addition to classification by dimensionality, nanomaterials can be categorized by composition. The chapter reviews the broadest categories, including inorganic and organic and gives examples of each. The properties of nanomaterials typically differ significantly from the corresponding coarser bulk material. Nanomaterials have unique beneficial physical, chemical, biological, and mechanical properties and these properties are used for a wide range of applications in the environment. Applications of dispersed systems, such as suspensions of particles and emulsions, and colloidal and nanometric systems are vast. Since many nanomaterials will reach the market in the future decennia, it will become of vital importance to characterize their properties, to develop evaluated test methodologies, and to standardize nanomaterial on worldwide principles and agreements.