Controlled growth of zinc oxide nanostructures for multifuctional applications

Abstract

In the last few decades nanoscience and nanotechnology are one of the most important branches of science. The term “Nano” in science, engineering, and technology is regularly used and defined as the size of the matter about 1 to 100 nm. The idea and concept of “Nano” came into the picture in late 1959, which is firstly presented by the Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman’s on his famous talk “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” at an American Physical Society meeting in California Institute of Technology. Since then applications of nanotechnology in its commercial version of cosmetics, food products, and electronics have been extensively delved in. These applications are limited to the bulk use of nanomaterials. Being a special class of matter, “Nanomaterials” with the constituents having nanometer range dimensions are regarded as the materials of 21st century taking into consideration its property combination and design uniqueness that are limits of the conventional bulk materials and monolithic. “Nature is a master chemist with incredible talent” stated in an article titled “Nano sandwiches” in Chemistry in Britain (1998) [1] mentioned that researchers are learning from nature to master the use of nanomaterials. Following this quest of learning, scientists stemmed into introducingvarious types of nanostructures for developing a new and advanced generation of materials.