New and scalable synthetic approaches have also been developed to meet the growing demand for industrially viable routes towards nanomaterial production.
Continuous-flow hydrothermal synthesis or supercritical water hydrothermal synthesis (scWHS) has been developed as a versatile solution to address this need.
The process developed can uniquely deliver controllable production of nano-hydroxyapatite (HA) in sheet, rod, or tube morphology, utilising a continuous-flow hydrothermal reactor.
This route was initially developed to take advantage of the variable chemical and physical properties of superheated water to produce metal oxide nanoparticles by rapid nucleation and precipitation. More recently, the development of alternate mixing regimes and reactor designs has enabled further exploitation of the properties of supercritical water to promote faster and more uniform mixing of reagent streams.