Here we report the synthesis of Pt/Ag bimetallic nanostructures with controlled number of void spaces via a tailored galvanic replacement reaction (GRR). Ag nanocubes (NCs) were employed as the template to react with Pt ions in the presence of HCl. The use of HCl in the GRR caused rapid precipitation of AgCl, which grew on the surface of Ag NCs and acted as a removable secondary template for the deposition of Pt. The number of nucleation sites for AgCl was tailored by controlling the amount of HCl added to the Ag NCs or by introducing PVP to the reaction. This strategy led to the formation of Pt/Ag hollow nanoboxes, dimers, multimers, or popcorn-shaped nanostructures consisting of one, two, or multiple hollow domains. Due to the presence of large void space and porous walls, these nanostructures exhibited high surface area and improved catalytic activity for methanol oxidation reaction.
Gold nanostars have attracted widespread interest due to their remarkable properties and broad applications in plasmonics, spectroscopy, biomedicine, and energy conversion. However, current synthetic methods of Au nanostars have limited control over their symmetry; most existing nanostars are characterized by having uncertain number of arms with different lengths and random spatial arrangement. This morphological arbitrariness not only hampers the fundamental understanding of the properties of Au nanostars, but also lead to poor reproducibility in their applications. Here we demonstrate that, by using a robust solution-phase method, Au nanostars with unpreceded degree of symmetry control can be obtained in high yield and with remarkable monodispersity. Icosahedral seeds are used to dictate the growth of 3D evenly distributed arms in an Ih symmetric manner. Alkylamines serve as shape-control agent to regulate the growth of the hexagonal pyramidal arms enclosed by high-index facets. Benefiting from their high symmetry, the Au nanostars exhibit superior single-particle SERS performance compared to asymmetric Au nanostars, in terms of both intensity and reproducibility.
We report a new type of water-soluble ultrathin Au-Ag alloy nanowire (NW), which exhibits unprecedented behavior in a colloidal solution. Upon growth of a thin metal (Pd, Pt, or Au) layer, the NW winds around itself to give a metallic double helix. We propose that the winding originates from the chirality within the as-synthesized Au-Ag NWs, which were induced to untwist upon metal deposition.
Developing new strategies for tuning the plasmonic properties of palladium nanostructures is of both fundamental and technological interest due to their potential applications in plasmonic hydrogen sensing, in situ surfaceenhanced Raman spectroscopy for catalysis, and solar energy harvesting. In this work, a new strategy of tuning the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) property of Pd nanocrystals by selectively sharpening their edges and corners is reported. Through a Cu(II)-assisted seed-mediated growth approach, sub-10-nm sharp edges and corners were grown on regular Pd nanocubes. The LSPR peaks of the as-formed concave Pd nanocubes could be tuned across the visible spectrum by simply controlling their sizes. Cu(II) was found to selectively activate the fast growth of Pd atoms along the [110] and [111] directions of the cubic Pd seeds and promote the formation of this new type of Pd concave nanocubes. This strategy of building Pd sharp edges and corners may be applicable for the design of new plasmonic nanostructures by using seeds of different metals, sizes, shapes, and crystal structures.
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