Chapter 3 - Methods for synthesis of nanocontainers

Nanocontainers represent an important scientific and industrial topic. They are nanostructures able to allocate in their void spaces one or more different active species that can be delivered and released in a controlled way. They can have the inorganic, organic, or composite origin with different composition, shape, and structure; the design of specific nanocontainers able to interact conveniently with the environment and to respond to a specific external stimulus in a defined manner is a great synthetic challenge. The aim of this chapter is to describe the main synthetic procedures of the various nanocontainers to cover as much as possible their emerging applications in biomedicine, plant biology, molecular biology, pharmaceutics, and materials science with particular attention to coating technology: therefore it will present the layer-by-layer technique, self-assembly methods, emulsion-based processes, precipitation-based synthetic methods, ultrasonic techniques, and the divergent and convergent approach.