An international team of researchers has used pioneering electron microscopy techniques to discover an important mechanism behind the reaction of metallic nanoparticles with the environment. Crucially, the research led by the University of York and reported in Nature Materials, shows that oxidation of metals – the process that describes, for example, how iron reacts with oxygen, in the presence of water, to form rust – proceeds much more rapidly in nanoparticles than at the macroscopic scale. This is due to the large amount of strain introduced in the nanoparticles due to their size which is over a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair. An image of a cuboid iron nanoparticle following six months exposure to the environment. The blue area is the oxide layer forming around the core of the nanoparticle. Credit: Amish Shah and Dr Roland Kröger. Improving the understanding of metallic nanoparticles – particularly those of iron and silver – is of key importance to scientists because of their many potential applications. For example, iron and iron oxide nanoparticles are considered important in fields ranging from clean fuel technologies, high density data storage and catalysis, to water treatment, soil remediation, targeted drug delivery and cancer

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