This article reviews the recent advances and challenges in the preparation of polymer/inorganic hybrid nanoparticles. We mainly focus on synthetic strategies, basing our classification on whether the inorganic and the polymer components have been formed in situ or ex situ, of the hybrid material. Accordingly, four types of strategies are identified and described, referring to recent examples: (i) ex situ formation of the components and subsequent attachment or integration, either by covalent or noncovalent bonding; (ii) in situ polymerization in the presence of ex situ formed inorganic nanoparticles; (iii) in situ precipitation of the inorganic components on or in polymer structures; and (iv) strategies in which both polymer and inorganic component are simultaneously formed in situ.

Nanoemulsions are kinetically stabilized emulsions with droplet sizes in the nanometer scale. These nanodroplets are able to confine spaces in which reactions of polymerization or precipitation can take place, leading to the formation of particles and capsules that can act as nanocarriers for biomedical applications. This review discusses the different possibilities of using nanoemulsions for preparing biomedical nanocarriers. According to the chemical nature, nanocarriers prepared in nanoemulsions are classified in polymeric, inorganic, or hybrid. The main synthetic strategies for each type are revised, including miniemulsion polymerization, nanoemulsion-solvent evaporation, spontaneous emulsification, sol-gel processes, and combination of different techniques to form multicomponent materials.

A wet-chemical method to produce zinc oxide nanocrystals of monodisperse size distribution (diameter range of 20–80 nm) is presented. The synthesis starts from zinc acetate dihydrate which is converted to ZnO in the presence of 1-pentanol in m-xylene at 130 °C. We report for the first time catalysis of this reaction by p-toluene sulfonic acid monohydrate (p-TSA), which allows a shorter reaction time and improves both the reproducibility of the particle size distribution and the crystallinity of the particles. The reaction can be scaled up to give multigram quantities of product per batch. Particles were characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and photoluminesence (PL) spectroscopy. Room temperature PL spectra of ZnO prepared without catalyst exhibit a strong and sharp UV emission band at ca. 385 nm and a weak and very broad green–yellow visible emission centered at ca. 550–560 nm. However, for nanoparticles precipitated in the presence of p-TSA, the UV emission is enhanced by a factor of 4, which can be correlated with the improvement of crystal perfection. A particle formation mechanism is discussed.