Biophysics Group, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
Nanoscale. 2018 Jul 13;10(27):12871-12934. doi: 10.1039/c8nr02278j.
Nanostructures have attracted huge interest as a rapidly growing class of materials for many applications. Several techniques have been used to characterize the size, crystal structure, elemental composition and a variety of other physical properties of nanoparticles. In several cases, there are physical properties that can be evaluated by more than one technique. Different strengths and limitations of each technique complicate the choice of the most suitable method, while often a combinatorial characterization approach is needed. In addition, given that the significance of nanoparticles in basic research and applications is constantly increasing, it is necessary that researchers from separate fields overcome the challenges in the reproducible and reliable characterization of nanomaterials, after their synthesis and further process (e.g. annealing) stages. The principal objective of this review is to summarize the present knowledge on the use, advances, advantages and weaknesses of a large number of experimental techniques that are available for the characterization of nanoparticles. Different characterization techniques are classified according to the concept/group of the technique used, the information they can provide, or the materials that they are destined for. We describe the main characteristics of the techniques and their operation principles and we give various examples of their use, presenting them in a comparative mode, when possible, in relation to the property studied in each case.
纳米结构作为一类快速发展的材料，因其在许多应用中的优势而引起了极大的关注。已经有几种技术被用于表征纳米粒子的尺寸、晶体结构、元素组成和各种其他物理性质。在某些情况下，有一些物理性质可以通过多种技术来评估。每种技术的优缺点不同，这使得选择最合适的方法变得复杂，而通常需要采用组合特征化方法。此外，鉴于纳米粒子在基础研究和应用中的重要性不断增加，来自不同领域的研究人员需要克服在合成和进一步处理（例如退火）阶段后，对纳米材料进行可重现和可靠特征化的挑战。本文综述的主要目的是总结目前关于大量可用于纳米粒子特征化的实验技术的使用、进展、优点和缺点的知识。不同的特征化技术根据所使用的技术概念/组、它们可以提供的信息或它们所针对的材料进行分类。我们描述了这些技术的主要特点及其操作原理，并给出了它们的各种应用实例，在可能的情况下，根据每种情况下研究的性质，以比较的方式呈现。
