Morphological Modification of Metal Oxide Nanomaterials Using Different Types of Organic Modifiers

Abstract

Organic modifiers make incorporating nanoparticles into composite components easier, improving their optical, mechanical, and electrical characteristics. By altering the dimension, arrangement, aggregation, and surface characteristics of the nanoparticles, organic modifiers are thought to be an efficient way to regulate the morphology of nanometal oxides. This can be evaluated by the synthesis and modification of nanometal oxides using various organic agents, such as tiny ligands, various acids, polymers, and so on. Organic modifiers improve crystallinity, bind to oxide surfaces efficiently, and cause morphological changes, reducing agglomeration, raising surface roughness, and exposing more reactive facets according to XRD, FT-IR, BET, SEM, and TEM investigations. In comparison to unmodified oxides, the results showed that organic modifiers greatly decreased agglomeration, regulated particle size distribution, and improved crystallinity. In general, surface modification with organic modifiers is necessary to maximize the effectiveness of nanoparticles for many reasons, such as materials research, drug delivery, diagnosis, and catalytic processes. In this review, we primarily presented several methods for applying organic modifiers to modify the surface of nanocrystals. Here, we mainly focused on the structural modification of six types of metal oxides (TiO2, Fe3O4, ZnO, Al2O3, CuO, NiO) via organic modifiers that are commonly used in various nanoparticle-based applications. The reason behind choosing these six nanoparticles is that they are common in use and there are no such review papers where all the surface modification information is accumulated. The results of this study will assist future researchers in carefully choosing organic modifiers that can be used as a successful method of modifying the morphology of nanometal oxides to satisfy particular functional requirements in technologically sophisticated applications. The importance of organic modifiers in developing nanoparticle technology and propelling advancements in various scientific and industrial fields is also highlighted in this review.