Studying on the nanostructure formation and synthesis mechanism of nanomaterials using transmssion electron microscopy

Abstract

Various research related to nanomaterials have been studied over the past several decades with their unique properties and phenomena come from their nanoscale size and shape effect such as large surface area and quantum effect. Therefore, modification of their feature in fabrication is a key issue to control the nanoscale effects. So, basic research for their mechanism study is essentially required but it is hard to study how they are fabricated because we are not able to understand nanoscale reaction (or phenomena) due to their nanoscale size during their fabrication. For this reason, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis has increased interest as a key tool for understanding the formation and synthesis mechanism of nanomaterials because TEM analysis can be able to visualize directly due to their atomic resolution imaging ability. Therefore, as a result, it has given scientists ways to understand the nanoscale phenomena depending on material’s nanoscale organization and specific shapes. Indeed, since the discovery of nanomaterials, research for nanomaterial modification has been developed with the recent leap of microscopy analysis continuously. In this study, we reveal the formation mechanism of nanostructures for some specific nanomaterials and synthesis mechanism for MXene, a new family 2-dimensional (2D) material, via the understanding of synthesis mechanism. Also, we suggest the modified ways to obtain more improved nanomaterials based on our findings and expect that it can open the way for the mechanism study of other nanomaterials.