In the last decade, new trends involve the ability to fabricate, characterize, and manipulate artificial structures, whose features are controlled at the nanometer level. They embrace areas of research as diverse as engineering, physics, chemistry, materials science, and molecular biology. Research in this direction has been triggered by the recent availability of revolutionary instruments and approaches that allow the investigation of material properties with a resolution close to the atomic level. Strongly connected to such technological advances are the pioneering studies that have revealed new physical properties of matter at a level intermediate between atomic/molecular and bulk.

Nanoscale materials frequently show behavior that is intermediate between that of a macroscopic solid and that of an atomic or molecular system. Actually, there are many additional properties specific to such systems that cannot easily be grasped by simple reasoning. These properties are related to the sometimes-counterintuitive behavior that charge carriers (electrons and holes) can exhibit when they are forced to dwell in such structures. These properties can only be explained by the laws of quantum mechanics.

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Through this course, we will study at the very beginning the Nanomaterials, focusing not only from the theoretical or practical point of view, but we also focus on their Safety and Environment implications. We will also study in detail nanocarbon materials, including their structure, growth mechanisms and their characterization using Raman spectroscopy. We also, develop the potential application of these macromolecules. Then, we will study Luminescent nanostructures in ceramic materials: quantum dots, the effect of high pressure, applications of luminescent ceramic materials.

Besides theory, we want to introduce to the current synthesis techniques and characterization of Nanomaterials based on polymers for Health Applications, biomaterials/Drug Delivery Technologies. Followed by an Introduction to Global Energy Issues: i. Photovoltaic conversion, ii. Electrochemical storage and fuel cells. The course will finish on two topics regarding a theoretical/practical Introduction to Colloidal Synthesis of Nanomaterials and their Characterization in solutions and introduction to XPS for characterizing nanomaterials