OPEN

Nanomaterials a found more and more often in our everyday life, whether it is in the food industry, the transport, medical devices, building materials or cosmetics. If the small size of these objects confers them unprecedented properties, it also facilitates the absorption of these nanoparticles by the organs of living beings. Thus a major stake in the development of the nanoindustrial industry in Europe stands in the effective control of nanoproducts at all stages of production in order to certify the nanomaterials at the light of a set of relevant properties, not only towards the targeted final applications, but also in a prospect to answer better the regulations to come regarding risk bound to the placing on the market of nanoproducts. The caracterisation challenge not only consists of getting the chemical composition, the mean size and size distribution of the raw and processed materials, but also targets properties such as their shape, their surface, their crystal structure or the presence of trace non-desired elements. Our approach aims at implementing a fast, reliable and integrable multi-technical module of characterization inserted within industrial processes of production. Our objective is to shorten significantly the times of development and, hence, to take part in te improvement of the industrial efficiency of the sector in Europe. We also pay a particular attention on the economy of resources, raw materials and energy, as well as in the problems of recycling and stability in time. Thus, besides a substantial gain of competitiveness, we also look for a significant advances in the field of the quality control and standardisation of nanomaterials along their whole life cycle, in order to answer the justifiable expectations of the society in terms of public health. The strategy of the envisaged consortium bases on the follow-up of the production of metallic nanoparticles, oxides and carbide shaped in the state of divided solid or thin films following the ascending strategy of nano-assembly (bottom up). Owing to the diversity of composition and structure of the targeted nanomaterials, our project embraces the whole nanoindustrial sector and potential markets in Europe. Besides the follow-up of the production of nano-objects, we also address intermediats's' production such as suspensions of nanoparticles in a solvent, functionalised nanostructured products as well as in several final applications. The in situ characterisation of nanomanufacturing processes is the central activity of the aimed AAP. So, the consortium is organized around an academic team specialised in the in situ and operando characterisation at UCCS-LILLE, coordinator of the project, and the company, HORIBA, who markets solutions of analysis at the nanoscale. To every class of nano-objects corresponds a combination of specific characterisation techniques . To this end, the proposed consortium gathers several laboratories and research teams public recognized for their expertise in the field of the synthesis and the characterisation of every targeted class of nanomaterials: nanoparticles oxide (TiO2, SiO2 ...), metallic nanoparticles and carbon nano-objects: nanotubes of carbon, graphene. The project also involves the preparation of tailored reference materials, and their comprehensive characterisation for being implemented in an open access database and establish correlations between the way of preparation and the final physico-chemical properties of the nanomaterials. The scaling up of the developed characterisation tools and their fitting to the requirements of an industrial production line will be supported by the commitement of the SME TECNAN, specialised in the production and the marketing of functional products involving nanoparticles.