Crystal and electronic facet analysis of ultrafine Ni<sub>2</sub>P particles by solid-state NMR nanocrystallography.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34267194.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-24589-5 and PMC identifier 8282690.
- 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 and morphological control of crystalline nanoparticles is crucial in the field of heterogeneous catalysis and the development of "reaction specific" catalysts. To achieve this, colloidal chemistry methods are combined with ab initio calculations in order to define the reaction parameters, which drive chemical reactions to the desired crystal nucleation and growth path. Key in this procedure is the experimental verification of the predicted crystal facets and their corresponding electronic structure, which in case of nanostructured materials becomes extremely difficult. Here, by employing <sup>31</sup>P solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance aided by advanced density functional theory calculations to obtain and assign the Knight shifts, we succeed in determining the crystal and electronic structure of the terminating surfaces of ultrafine Ni<sub>2</sub>P nanoparticles at atomic scale resolution. Our work highlights the potential of ssNMR nanocrystallography as a unique tool in the emerging field of facet-engineered nanocatalysts.