Nanosized tantala based materials - synthesis and applications

The excellent properties and enormous applications of tantala have attracted much interest in understanding their miniature, such as nanosized tantala materials, because the nanoscale alters their properties significantly. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of the up-to-date research results on the various synthetic procedures of nanosized tantala materials, including naked tantala nanoparticles, nanocomposites, and core/shell nanoparticles. In addition to their synthetic procedures, their utilization towards a variety of applications, such as photocatalytic hydrogen evolution, photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants, osteological applications, and fabrication of solar cells, were also discussed in this article. The variation in the reaction conditions, such as concentration, reaction temperature, and reaction time, etc., can substantially affect the morphology, particle size, size distribution, and crystallinity. Although this review confines to the materials containing nanosized tantala particles, the information provided will be of great help in various disciplines. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.