Thermally-induced reversible structural isomerization in colloidal semiconductor CdS magic-size clusters.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29950666.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-04842-0 and PMC identifier 6021431.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Structural isomerism of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals has been largely unexplored. Here, we report one pair of structural isomers identified for colloidal nanocrystals which exhibit thermally-induced reversible transformations behaving like molecular isomerization. The two isomers are CdS magic-size clusters with sharp absorption peaks at 311 and 322 nm. They have identical cluster masses, but slightly different structures. Furthermore, their interconversions follow first-order unimolecular reaction kinetics. We anticipate that such isomeric kinetics are applicable to a variety of small-size functional nanomaterials, and that the methodology developed for our kinetic study will be helpful to investigate and exploit solid-solid transformations in other semiconductor nanocrystals. The findings on structural isomerism should stimulate attention toward advanced design and synthesis of functional nanomaterials enabled by structural transformations.