Emerging Nanotechnologies for Manufacturing, 2nd Edition

152.1 Introduction

2.1 INTRODUCTION

One aspect of current interest and great relevance to the fundamental understanding

of the behaviour of materials is the role of dimensionality and size on their opti-

cal, chemical and mechanical properties for application in a wide range of devices.

Owing to the nanoscale features, one-dimensional systems exhibit novel physical

and chemical properties that can be exploited in optics, catalysis and data storage

devices. Hence, such systems are being synthesized and studied in great details. For

instance, polymer nanobres are used as selective gas separation membranes, l-

ters, biomedical llers, drug carriers ...