Surface chemical transformations of nanoparticles

Nanomaterials are a relatively new class of materials for which a regulatory framework still has to be established and regulators require comprehensive datasets of well characterized nanomaterials for the implementation. Especially information about the surface chemistry of nanoparticles is crucial, since it largely determines their biological and environmental fate. How the surface chemistry changes under relevant ageing conditions is of particular interest, because exposure will normally occur not to the pristine material but to a nanoform that underwent some kind of transformation. In this talk, first a short overview about the contributions of division 6.1 to multiple European-funded projects will be presented, in which surface analytical techniques are used to improve the physical-chemical characterization of nanomaterials. Secondly, a study investigating the surface-chemical transformations of a representative set of titanium dioxide nanoparticles is discussed in more detail. The ageing has partly been performed at the BAM division 7.5, and the surface chemistry was analyzed using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). By analyzing the complex mass spectra with principal component analysis (PCA), it was possible to identify even subtle changes that occur upon ageing.