Application of ionizing irradiation for structure modification of nanomaterials

Abstract

Ionizing irradiation passing through materials interacts with their building units inducing changes in the structure. This causes modification of their properties and alteration of their performance. Generally, the ionizing irradiation used for material modification can be part of the electromagnetic spectrum (X-ray or γ-ray irradiation) or can have corpuscular nature (such as irradiation of α-particles, β-particles, electrons, and neutrons). α and β irradiations belong to low-energy irradiations, whereas X-ray, γ-ray and neutrons are high-energy irradiations. The subject of this chapter was the observation of the changes in structure and consequently in properties of nano-dimensional materials, namely TiO2 and carbon nanostructures (graphene and multiwalled carbon nanotubes, MWCNTs), after treatment with X-ray irradiation.