ja506323s_si_001.pdf (356.9 kB)
Atomic-Scale Evolution of a Growing Core–Shell Nanoparticle
journal contribution
posted on 2014-09-10, 00:00 authored by Shai Mangel, Eran Aronovitch, Andrey
N. Enyashin, Lothar Houben, Maya Bar-SadanUnderstanding
the atomic-scale growth at solid/solution interfaces
is an emerging frontier in molecular and materials chemistry. This
is particularly challenging when studying chemistry occurring on the
surfaces of nanoparticles in solution. Here, we provide atomic-scale
resolution of growth, in a statistical approach, at the surfaces of
inorganic nanoparticles by state-of-the-art aberration-corrected transmission
electron microscopy (TEM) and focal series reconstruction. Using well-known
CdSe nanoparticles, we unfold new information that, for the first
time, allows following growth directly, and the subsequent formation
of CdS shells. We correlate synthetic procedures with resulting atomic
structure by revealing the distribution of lattice disorder (such
as stacking faults) within the CdSe core particles. With additional
sequential synthetic steps, an ongoing transformation of the entire
structure occurs, such that annealing takes place and stacking faults
are eliminated from the core. The general strategy introduced here
can now be used to provide equally revealing atomic-scale information
concerning the structural evolution of inorganic nanostructures.