Tilted face-centered-cubic supercrystals of PbS nanocubes.

Quan, Zewei; Loc, Welley Siu; Lin, Cuikun; Luo, Zhiping; Yang, Kaikun; Wang, Yuxuan; Wang, Howard; Wang, Zhongwu et al. · Nano Lett · 2012

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We demonstrate a direct fabrication of PbS nanocube supercrystals without size-selection pretreatment on the building blocks. Electron microscopic and synchrotron small angle X-ray scattering analyses confirm that nanocubes pack through a tilted face-centered-cubic (fcc) arrangement, that is, face-to-face along the <110>(super) direction, resulting in a real packing efficiency of as high as ∼83%. This new type of superstructure consisting of nanocubes as building blocks, reported here for the first time, is considered the most stable surfactant-capped nanocube superstructure determined by far.