Thermal Stability of Au Rhombic Dodecahedral Nanocrystals Can Be Greatly Enhanced by Coating Their Surface with an Ultrathin Shell of Pt.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38174901.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02680 and PMC identifier 10797619.
- 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
Rhombic dodecahedral nanocrystals have been considered particularly difficult to synthesize because they are enclosed by {110}, a low-index facet with the greatest surface energy. Recently, we demonstrated the use of seed-mediated growth for the facile and robust synthesis of Au rhombic dodecahedral nanocrystals (AuRD). While the unique shape and surface structure of AuRD are desirable for potential applications in plasmonics and catalysis, respectively, their high surface energy makes them highly susceptible to thermal degradation. Here we demonstrate that it is feasible to greatly improve the thermal stability with some sacrifice to the plasmonic properties of the original AuRD by coating their surface with an ultrathin shell made of Pt. Our <i>in situ</i> electron microscopy analysis indicates that the ultrathin Pt coating can increase the thermal stability from 60 up to 450 °C, a trend that is also supported by the results from a computational study.