Why do you think your paper is highly cited?

“The successful demonstration of nanoparticle synthesis and the techniques used in this study are very useful for new investigators as well as established investigators who are doing nanomaterials research using supercritical fluid as a solvent.”

This paper describes a method of synthesizing metal nanoparticles in supercritical carbon dioxide using microemulsion as a nanoreactor and a template. Supercritical carbon dioxide is considered a green solvent and has many advantages over conventional organic solvents for chemical reactions and syntheses. Making nanoparticles in supercritical fluids and exploring their potential applications in novel materials fabrication and as catalysts for chemical reactions is of great interest to many scientists at the present time. This paper uses a water-in-CO2 microemulsion to control the size of metal nanoparticles synthesized by chemical reduction of metal ions dissolved in the water core of the microemulsion. The formation of the nanoparticles was monitored spectroscopically using a high-pressure fiber optic cell and a CCD array UV-Vis spectrometer. The results and the techniques described in this paper are very useful for other investigators in starting their research in nanomaterials synthesis in supercritical fluids. Now many papers are published every year regarding nanomaterials synthesis in supercritical fluids and this paper is often cited as one of the pioneering studies in this area.

This paper demonstrates that water-in-CO2 microemulsion can be used as a template for synthesizing nanoparticles in supercritical carbon dioxide and in situ spectroscopy can be used to monitor particle formation in the high-pressure fluid phase. The successful demonstration of nanoparticle synthesis and the techniques used in this study are very useful for new investigators as well as established investigators who are doing nanomaterials research using supercritical fluid as a solvent.

My research group has been doing metal extraction and dissolution research using supercritical carbon dioxide as a solvent for the past 15 years. Our research in the ’90s was focused on applications of this technique in nuclear waste treatment and toxic metal remediation problems. In the late ’90s, we realized that metal chelates dissolved in supercritical fluids could be chemically reduced to form metal films of nanoparticles on surfaces of different substrates. The concept of using water-in-CO2 microemulsion as a template to control size of nanoparticles synthesized in supercritical fluid was later developed and published in a communication titled "Synthesizing and Dispersing Silver Nanoparticles in a Water-in-Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Microemulsion," M. Ji, X. Chen, C. M. Wai, J. L. Fulton, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 121, 2631-2632, (1999). This Chemistry of Materials paper extended the previous communication and introduced the in situ spectroscopic monitoring technique.
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Chien M. Wai, Professor
Department of Chemistry
University of Idaho
Moscow, Idaho, USA