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Tininess Makes a Huge Impact: Semiconducting and Metallic Nanoparticles.
Defying the conventions of linguistic repetition, the prefi x nano springs up in all languages with unusual force. Nanostructure, nanofi ber, nanocrystals, nanowires, nanotubes, nanodevice ... These are just a few examples, although you won’t fi nd them in the dictionary. These words have retained some meaning of the root from which they are derived, but should inescapably be contemplated, at best, as distant metaphorical refl ections. The words nanoparticle and nanocrystal will be the focus of this article: What are nanoparticles? When is a nanoparticle a nanocrystal? When is the nanoparticle a quantum dot? What applications can we expect if they are semiconducting or metallic?