title: Continuous-flow hydrothermal synthesis for the production of inorganic nanomaterials.
abstract: As nanotechnology becomes increasingly important and ubiquitous, new and scalable synthetic approaches are needed to meet the growing demand for industrially viable routes to nanomaterial production. Continuous-flow hydrothermal synthesis or supercritical water hydrothermal synthesis (scWHS) is emerging as a versatile solution to this problem. The process was initially developed to take advantage of the tunable chemical and physical properties of superheated water to produce metal oxide nanoparticles by rapid nucleation and precipitation. The development of new mixing regimes and reactor designs has been facilitated by the modelling of reactor systems. These new reactor designs further exploit the properties of supercritical water to promote faster and more uniform mixing of reagent streams. The synthetic approach has been expanded beyond the metal oxide systems for which it was conceived, and now encompasses metal sulfides, metal phosphates, metal nanoparticles and metal-organic frameworks. In many of these cases, some degree of size and shape control can be achieved through careful consideration of both chemistry and reactor design. This review briefly considers the development of scWHS reactor technology, before highlighting some of our recent work in expanding the scope of this synthetic method to include a wide range of materials.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
authors.forename: Peter W
authors.initials: PW
authors.lastname: Dunne
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
authors.forename: Alexis S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Munn
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
authors.forename: Chris L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Starkey
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
authors.forename: Tom A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Huddle
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK edward.lester@nottingham.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Ed H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Lester
keywords: continuous-flow; metal–organic frameworks; nanomaterials; reactor design; supercritical water