Significant progress has been made in recent years with regards to the synthesis of noble-metal nanocrystals with controlled sizes, shapes, and structures. With the introduction of uniform and well-controlled seeds into a synthesis, it has become possible to separate growth from nucleation and further investigate the explicit roles played by thermodynamics and kinetics in controlling the shape evolution of colloidal noble-metal nanocrystals. Using single-crystal seeds enclosed by a mix of low-index {100}, {111}, and {110} facets as an example, we have been able to deterministically access many different types of shapes that are only allowed under a specific condition set by either thermodynamics or kinetics. The insights we have learnt from these studies can also be applied to explain the shapes previously observed in the conventional one-pot synthesis. In this talk, I will focus on these most recent developments.

Recent progess in controlling the synthesis of colloidal noble-metal nanocrystals

247th National Meeting (2014)

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