Characterization techniques

The physicochemical properties of new nanomaterials can be analyzed using a large array of characterization techniques. However, nanomaterials are a complex subgroup of materials to characterize as they share a similar size range rather than a similar chemical composition or synthetic process. The development of new nanomaterials has been pushing forward the development of novel analytical techniques or new sampling methods for existing techniques to fill the gap between what can be measured and what we need to know about new nanomaterials. This chapter focuses on commercially available and widespread techniques used to analyze the size and shape of nanomaterials. The core of the chapter is devoted to the different microscopy and scattering techniques used to characterize the size of nanomaterials.