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| Dispersion tools | Principle of operation | Advantages | Disadvantages |
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| Mills (to include ball, stirred media, and centrifugal and jet mills) | Involves ultrafine grinding process | Useful for large batches | Slow/inefficient—ball milling may take days in some cases
Can be difficult to clean; contamination likely |
| Stirring (magnetic/overhead stirring) | Uses a magnetic bar or an overhead-stirring paddle
Has a rotational speed to create a vortex | Rarely results in attrition/breakage of nanoparticles
Cheap/affordable | Inefficient
Rarely results in deagglomeration and is often employed in order to improve homogeneity of dispersion |
| High-speed homogenizer | Use of a rotor & stator generator probe; the rotor acts as a centrifugal pump to recirculate the liquid and suspends the solids through the generator | Suitable for large liquid samples up to 2500 mL | Potential metal contamination |
| High-pressure homogenizer | Shear and cavitation provided via increase in the velocity of pressurized liquid streams in micro channels | Highly efficient | Nanoparticle architecture can be altered; increase of temperature in the dispersion likely
Expensive |
| Ultrasound sonication bath | Use ultrasound waves and cavitation in a bath | Cheap/affordable | Both formats less effective (less shear) compared to probe format |
| Ultrasound probe sonication or ultrasonic disruptor | Similar to ultrasonic bath but aims to deliver more energy density in smaller volume in comparison to the corresponding bath format | Highly efficient | Probe tip disintegration can contaminate samples
Can alter nanoparticle architecture; temperature increase (even for a few minutes) in dispersion highly likely |
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