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Mechanisms

What are the mechanism face-off?

The nanomaterials evolve during their whole life cycle. It is essential to take into account their evolution in the environment, the various mechanisms which are involved during the critical phases: the dispersion in the air, the propensity to deposit and to agglomerate, the migration and the transformation in water and the ground, the conditions and preferential places of accumulation, the conditions of persistence and degradation, as well as the acute and chronic toxicity of these structures on the flora and the fauna.

Three mechanisms mainly affect the deposit of particles:

Deposit on a nanoparticles wall (10, 30, 50 nm): (1) only subject to  thermal diffusion, (2) attracted by a cold wall, (3) attracted by an electrostatically charged wall.

  • Brownian diffusion facilitates a surface encounter,
  • thermophoresis conducts them toward cold areas,
  • an electrostatic field attracts particles.

For nanoscale particles (all things equal moreover), electrostatic forces dominate.