Preface

During the past decade, the essential implications of nanotechnology have been proven and it has been established as emerging technology providing new directions of modern research broadly defined as "nanoscale science and technology". With the birth of nanoscience and nanotechnology in the last two decades, the most exciting and fastest growing fields were formed to create the new functional nanoscale dimensions systems and materials. Nanotechnology; research development and commercialization offer high revolutionary instruments and techniques to investigate the material properties at the nanoscale. Such technological advances have inspired new pioneering experiments that have revealed new physical properties and effects of matter at an intermediate level between atomic and bulk. Due to the potential technological applications for nanomaterials, they have become the focus of intense investigations. These materials with different sizes and shapes, such as nanorods and nanocomposites, with identical compositions often possess special properties. The purpose of this book is to provide a perspective on the current status of nanorods and nanocomposites with the contents provided by the scientists and researchers in the related professions. As such, this book is categorized into Part I, with an emphasis on nanorods, and Part II, with the specific importance of nanocomposites.

The book, *NANORODS* and *NANOCOMPOSITES*, provides the reader (students, scientists, and engineers working in the field of materials science and condensed matter physics) with an overview of the advances made on the synthesis of nanorods and nanocomposite materials and their emerging applications for a better lifestyle. The nanorods section covers advanced materials (metals, semiconductors, and organic materials) for nanorods, and growth/synthesis techniques of nanorods. There are six chapters in this section, which covers synthesis, characterizations and applications of gold nanorods, semiconducting oxide nanorods, and some composite nanorods. Emerging applications of the nanorods in various fields ranging from optoelectronic devices, sensors, and electro-optical devices are presented in the chapters. As all the contributing authors of the book are active researchers, they provide an up-to-date summary of their research topics. The readers will be presented with all the recent advances on the topics covered in this book. At the end of each chapter, important outputs of the topic covered and future research directions are provided. The perspective of the research on a special kind of nanostructures, nanorods, is presented in the Prologue.

There is one chapter to introduce the growth process of nanorods and cover the important strategies developed for the growth of various nanorods. Alsultan *et al.* presented the growth strategies of carbon, ZnO, gold, and magnetic nanorods. In addition, there are four chapters that cover the gas sensing application of ZnO written by Wang *et al.;* application of carbon nanorods in EO/IR detectors written by Sood *et al.;* a theoretical study on the structural and melting properties of gold nanorods written by Rida *et al.;* and metallo-dielectric colloidal films by Ana *et al*.

The nanocomposites section covers advanced nanocomposites. There are eight chapters in this section, which covers graphene, graphene like, polymer, and

**II**

**Chapter 9 159**

**Chapter 10 173**

**Chapter 11 195**

**Chapter 12 217**

**Chapter 13 229**

**Chapter 14 249**

Polymer Nanocomposite-Based Electrochemical Sensors and Biosensors

Mechanical and Tribological Properties of Epoxy Nano Composites for

Nanocomposite-Based Graphene for Nanosensor Applications

*by Hussein Shokrvash, Rahim Yazdani Rad, Abouzar Massoudi* 

Computational Analysis of Nanostructures for Li-Ion Batteries

*by Baiju John*

*by Rumei Cheng and Shengju Ou*

*by Rashmi Aradhya and Nijagal M. Renukappa*

Copper Bimetals and Their Nanocomposites

Classification of Electrospinning Methods *by Muhammad Waqas Munir and Usman Ali*

*by Jameela Fatheema and Syed Rizwan*

High Voltage Applications

*and Reza Shokrvash*

epoxy nanocomposites. In addition, the mechanical and tribological properties of epoxy nanocomposites have also be considered. Nanocomposite-based sensors are presented in one chapter by Baiju. The kinetic features of epoxy nanocomposites synthesis process is evaluated by Prof. Irzhak Vadim. Also, the classification and application of electrospinning methods are covered. One of the chapters deals with the study of the electrolysis synthesis of copper matrix nanocomposites developed for the fabrication of nano-particulate bulk materials.

The editors hope that this book will contribute to increasing the availability of and access to new developments of nanomaterial synthesis and on nanostructureproperty relationships in a specific way, especially in nanorods and nanocomposites.

> **Morteza Sasani Ghamsari** Solid State Lasers Research Group, Iran

> > **Soumen Dhara** Faculty of Science, Sri Sri University, Odisha, India

> > > **1**

Section 1

Nanorods

Section 1 Nanorods

**3**

**Figure 1.**

*Source: Scopus).*

**Chapter 1**

*Soumen Dhara*

**1. Introduction**

relatively unrestricted [5] (**Figure 1**).

**2. Synthesis methods of nanorods**

Prologue: Nanorods – Recent

Advances and Future Perspective

Nanorods (NRs) are a one-dimensional wonder in the nanomaterials science which have shown promising future for its applications in many fields ranging from household appliances [1] to medical technology [2, 3] to space technology [4]. Nanosized materials with an aspect ratio (defined as the ratio of the length to the diameter of the NR) greater than 10 are considered as nanorods. With respect to other nanostructures, they present several advantages, like a larger surface-areato-volume ratio, a direct carrier conduction path, a large variety of potential novel properties available through the control of size and structure, and high compatibility with standard industrial device fabrication technologies. Such structures are of particular interest to the researchers; we can see from the increasing number of papers, as they exhibit quantum confinement in two dimensions, while the third is

Nanorods can be grown by using either a *bottom-up* approach or a *top-down* approach. The *bottom-up* approach is the well-explored techniques, and varieties of NRs have been synthesized ranging from elemental metallic, organic, and semiconducting NRs and some complex oxide NRs. The chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is the most used and developed technique to synthesize various metallic, organic, and semiconductor NRs with controllable size and orientation based on a *bottom-up* approach. Control of size (diameter and length) of the NRs and its orientation on the substrate are achieved after extensive research on the growth of NRs by several researchers worldwide. However, it needs precise control of each of the growth parameters, e.g., source of the vapor, vaporization temperature, growth temperature,

*Increase in the number of publication on the topic on nanorods for the last 20 years (Keywords: "Nanorods";* 
