Nanotechnology

People have encountered nanotechnology in their everyday life already for a very long time, e.g. gold nanoparticles have been used since thousands of years to colour glass in an intense red. Modern chemical nanotechnology focuses on the effects of nanoparticles incorporated in e. g. coatings, polymers or textile impregnations - just to name a view - leading to superior properties of the resulting materials.

Nanoparticles are by definition quite small, typically <100 nm. Inevitably, this means that nanoparticles have incredibly large surface areas up to several hundred m²/g. For nanoparticles dispersed in a fluid or solid matrix, this means a very large interfacial area which needs to be taken care of. Here our core competence in controlling interfacial phenomena comes in handy: Only by using suitable dispersing additives you will have dispersed nanoparticles, without dispersants you will end up with aggregated agglomerated chunks. Considering the large variety of nanoparticles available within Degussa, it is not surprising that we currently have several activities concerning nanotechnology in our R&D groups. We are quite confident that we are working on topics which are beneficial to your application.