Supercritical Fluid Deposition Techniques for Nanostructured Materials

Supercritical fluid deposition leverages the unique solvent properties of a supercritical medium—often carbon dioxide above its critical temperature and pressure—to carry dissolved precursors into porous supports or onto substrates, yielding finely controlled nanostructures. In this regime, the fluid combines gas-like diffusivity with liquid-like solvating power, promoting uniform precursor transport and deposition at moderate temperatures. Reactive deposition processes introduce reducing agents or ligands within the supercritical phase to trigger in situ nanoparticle formation, while impregnation approaches rely on precursor adsorption followed by post-deposition reduction. Laser-assisted techniques in supercritical media further expand the toolkit by enabling direct ablation and deposition of metal atoms, producing narrowly distributed nanoparticles. These methods have been applied to catalysts, electronic films and energy-conversion architectures, offering low-waste, scalable routes to monometallic or alloyed nanostructures. Ongoing efforts focus on tuning particle size, loading and morphology through precision control of fluid density, pressure, temperature and co-solvent composition, underpinned by advances in process modelling and in situ characterisation.

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Supercritical Fluid Deposition Techniques for Nanostructured Materials publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in supercritical fluid deposition techniques for nanostructured materials across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Supercritical fluid reactive deposition (SFRD): A technique in which dissolved precursors react or decompose within a supercritical medium to form nanoparticles directly on supports.

Adsorption isotherm: A mathematical relationship describing the amount of precursor adsorbed onto a substrate as a function of pressure or concentration at constant temperature.

PC-SAFT: Perturbed-chain Statistical Associating Fluid Theory, a molecular thermodynamic model used to predict solubility and phase behaviour of complex fluids.

Monometallic nanoparticle: A nanoparticle composed of a single metallic element, often valued for its uniform electronic and catalytic properties.

Bimetallic nanoparticle: A nanoparticle comprising two different metals, which can exhibit synergistic effects and tunable surface characteristics.

Co-solvent: An auxiliary solvent added to a supercritical fluid to modify its solvating power and facilitate precursor dissolution or substrate wetting.

References

1. Deposition of Pd, Pt, and PdPt Nanoparticles on TiO2 Powder Using Supercritical Fluid Reactive Deposition: Application in the Direct Synthesis of H2O2. Molecules (2024).
2. Adsorption of Precursors on Substrates in the Presence of scCO2 for the Synthesis of Supported Metallic Nanoparticles: Experiments and Modeling. Fluids (2023).
3. Modeling the Solubility of Ferrocene in Supercritical CO2 via PC-SAFT Using Solubilities Data Measured in Organic Solvents. Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan (2023).
4. Synthesis of Supported Heterogeneous Catalysts by Laser Ablation of Metallic Palladium in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Medium. Molecules (2020).