Agriculture; Deterioration; Ecosystems; Hazards; Industrial plants; Industrial wastes; Plant extracts; Plasmonics; Synthesis (chemical); Alternative solutions; Chemical functionalization; Development and applications; Environmental profile; Hazardous substances; Local surface plasmon resonances; Material efficiency; Metallic nanoparticles; Plasmonic nanoparticles
The accelerated industrial growth and the human consumerism during the past decades, as well as the agricultural and livestock activities, have led to a general deterioration of the world ecosystems. An alternative solution is the usage of ecomaterials, or "environmentally conscious materials," which can be classified in the following four categories: "hazardous substance free material," "materials with green environmental profile," "recyclable materials," and "materials with high material-efficiency." The design, synthesis, development and application of this kind of materials, are important steps to remediate the world ecosystems. On the other hand, the metallic nanoparticles are materials with a wide variety of properties and applications, which are different from the ones shown by their bulk counterpart. The usage of these plasmonic nanoparticles, that is to say, those nanoparticles which show a local surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), has been extended in a way that they can be used as ecomaterials from different approaches: as a material with a green environmental profile by using industrial wastes, such as non-used plants parts, for their synthesis; as a recyclable material due to their recovery, transformation and reuse capabilities; as a hazardous substance free material due to the existing green synthesis methods which use microorganisms and plant extracts; as a material with high materialefficiency, because they can replace or enhance a currently used material, for example, their use to catalyze chemical reactions. The above said is possible thanks to the nanophotonic properties of the plasmonic nanoparticles, which are caused by the LSPR modes, these modes are characteristic of the shape, size and composition of a metallic nanoparticle, and they can also be tuned to produce a specific response, this can be done by a chemical functionalization, a solvent change, interaction with other particles, etc., leading to a wide application catalog in which the plasmonic nanoparticles can be used as ecomaterial. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. All Rights Reserved.