Assembly of nanocrystal clusters by solvent evaporation: icosahedral order and the breakdown of the Maxwell regime.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32785366.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1039/d0sm00838a.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
We carry out molecular dynamics simulations of N gold alkylthiolated nanocrystals (0 ≤ N ≤ 29) contained in liquid droplets of octane, nonane and decane coexisting with its vapor. The equilibrium structures that result when all the solvent dries up consist of highly symmetric nanocrystal clusters with different degrees of icosahedral order that are thoroughly characterized. We show that the relaxation times follow two regimes, a first for small nanocrystal packing fraction, dominated by the diffusion of vapor molecules (Maxwell regime, relaxation times independent of N) and another, for larger packing fractions, where the solvent diffuses through the cluster (with relaxation times growing like N2/3). We discuss the connection to the assembly of superlattices, prediction of lattice constants and evaporation models.