Abstract
This systematic review is devoted to Mg(OH)2 nanotechnology, which received a growing attention in the last recent years, owing to a very wide field of applications. Mg(OH)2–based nanomaterials, originally employed as efficient sorbents and flame retardants, are now considered as a primary choice in a wide variety of technical fields. Among these, nanomedicine stands out in particular, where nano-Mg(OH)2 is used as a versatile drug-carrier in diagnostics and therapy, owing to its excellent tolerability for humans and animals, as amply proven in in-vivo and in-vitro tests. Likewise, its role in pharmacology is strictly correlated to the aforementioned context, thanks to its antibacterial properties towards different pathogens. The promising uses of this compound in nanotechnology are not limited to its form in nanoparticles (NPs), but other geometrical and compositional configurations as nanosheets, nanotubes and nanocomposites have been synthesized and proposed for new challenging applications. As for the synthesis techniques, the current trend is focused on a minimization of the global impact related to its manufacturing schemes, which are mainly related to wet chemical processes. For this reason, many efforts of the current research are addressed to the setup of Mg(OH)2 synthesis aiming at minimizing both energy implications, waste and environmental impact of the relevant manufacturing steps, both at laboratory and industrial scale. On that note, the paradigms of safety science for this compound impose progressively more stringent constraints based on reagent substitution, mild thermal conditions and risk minimization according to a multiobjective optimization scenario.
