Multimetallic nanoparticles (NPs) and nanoclusters (NCs) comprised of two or more elements show unique chemical and physical properties for numerous potential applications.  It is often a difficult analytical challenge to characterize the composition and detailed arrangement of the multiple atoms that make up the nanostructure.  Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), mass spectrometry, and x-ray absorbance spectroscopy (XAS) provide atomic-level details of NP structure and composition, but they are very expensive, tedious, and require skilled operation and analysis.  For these reasons, they are not as available as other more common analytical methods.  We have been exploring the use of anodic stripping voltammetry (ASV), a simple and low-cost electroanalytical technique, as an alternative approach for providing characterization of size, composition, and atomic level arrangement of various bimetallic nanostructures.  ASV provides accurate composition analysis for AuCu bimetallic NPs synthesized by different methods.  Importantly, ASV is sensitive to the atomic arrangement as well by showing different peak oxidation potentials for the Au and Cu, depending on the NP synthesis method and the resulting arrangement.  NP transformations in response to heat or other treatments can also be characterized by ASV as the arrangement of the atoms changes.  ASV is also sensitive to other alloys and the method of synthesis, whether it is a galvanic replacement, co-reduction, or sequential reduction of two or more metals.  ASV has great potential to be a useful characterization tool for atomic-level characterization of the arrangement of atoms in bimetallic and multimetallic nanostructures.

Characterization of multimetallic nanostructures by anodic Stripping voltammetry

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