29-01-2013, 08:50 PM
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.
