Abstract

Nowadays, nanomaterials including inorganic and organic nanomaterials with controlling and fascinating shapes have attracted numerous research interesting in extensive application fields, such as environmental pollution degradation, energy storage and production, electronic display, and sensors. ^1-4 Because the unique shape of diverse materials in nanoscale not only presents large surface area, intrinsic quantum-confined electrons, and facet-dependent anisotropic properties but also exhibits unique photo-electrochemical properties, such as light adsorption, electronic anisotropy, energy band structure, and high surface activity. ^5-8 Generally, the controlled shape of nanomaterials includes zero-dimensional (OD), one-dimensional (ID), two-dimensional (2D), and three-dimensional (3D), which is available to achieve through numerous strategies. Recently, ‘bottom-up’ approach, based on the assembled ionic, atomic, or molecular units through various reaction processes, is the preferential strategy to synthesize lots of nanomaterials with defined shape. During the synthesis process, multiple shapes in nanoscale are established, providing nanoparticles with diverse structure, composition, and surface properties. Typical bottom-up approach involving many wet-chemical methods, such as precipitated methods, preformed-seed-mediated growth method, polyol approach, template approach, electrochemical synthesis and photochemical synthesis routes, have been developed. ^9-12 Through all the methods, the thermodynamics and kinetics are referred in the synthesized process, which are the essential parameter to control the final shape of nanomaterials. ¹³ The intrinsic parameters for shape controlling of nanomaterials through synthesis process are described. Additionally, a great deal of creative and frequently used mechanisms and vital factors affected the eventual shape of nanoparticles are also presented, expecting to provide valuable information on shape controlling of nanoparticles.