Synthesis of Silver Nanoplates by Two-Dimensional Oriented Attachment

Abstract

Synthesis of silver nanoplates was studied in the modified polyol method, where the nucleation and seed stage occurred in a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-water mixture solution, and the growth stage happened in the PEG environment. The morphological evolution of nanoplates was characterized using UV, SEM, and TEM. Interestingly, plane nanostructures with unusual jagged edges were finally formed in our modified polyol method. Using TEM, we observed the medium state of fusion between two nanoplates, resulting in generating unusual jagged edges. Therefore, a novel two-dimensional oriented attachment occurred in our modified polyol method, which involves smaller nanoplates as the building blocks. Further control experiments showed that the presence of water could break this kinetic preferred reactivity, leading to the formation of nanoparticles.

Oriented attachment mechanism of triangular Ag nanoplates: a molecular dynamics study

“…This shape has an edge-to-thickness ratio of 4 : 1, matching with an experimentally observed ratio in ref. 30. To be consistent with plates observed in experiments, 37 a stacking fault is built in the middle layer to create a divide between the {111} and {110} side facets.…”

“…22 It is evident from a number of studies that OA is a kinetic process, as the aggregates that form are frequently lowdimensional or branched structures that appear to be far from equilibrium. 12,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] Thus, it is also important to understand the mechanisms and kinetic barriers that govern OA. Along these lines, our group used MD simulations based on the ReaxFF reactive force eld to probe the OA of TiO 2 (anatase) nanocrystals with adsorbed water.…”

“…In this study, we used atomistic MD simulations to probe the origins of OA observed experimentally in the growth of Ag plates. 30,31 In the experimental studies, triangular plates with edge lengths ranging from 300-1000 nm and thicknesses between 25-30 nm were grown in polyethylene glycol 30 or N,Ndimethylformamide (DMF) 31 under the protection of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). The plates were observed to aggregate laterally, "side-to-side" via an apparent OA mechanism to create larger 2D sheets in both studies.…”

Atomic-scale aspects of oriented attachment

“…Zhang et al, 2009;Zhang et al, 2010). From a practical perspective, OA frequently underlies the growth of complex architectures ranging from quasi-one-and two-dimensional structures (Tang and Kotov, 2005;Cho et al, 2005;Tian et al, 2012;Yu et al, 2005;Sharma et al, 2009;Halder and Ravishankar, 2007; G. Schliehe et al, 2010;Liu et al, 2012;Yuwono et al, 2010), such as nanowires, nanoribbons, and nanosheets, to hierarchical two-or three-dimensional superstructures (Heiligtag et al, 2011;Zitoun et al, 2005;Yang and Zeng, 2004). In the interest of achieving controlled bottom-up (and often surfactantfree) synthesis of these potentially useful structures, a strong fundamental understanding of OA is highly beneficial.…”

Temperature effects on the vibration and stability behavior of multi-layered graphene sheets embedded in an elastic medium

“…There are a number of plate like structures on the nano-scale level grown from different materials like gold nanoplates, silver nanoplates, boron nitride (BN) nanoplates, zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoplates, graphene sheets etc. [1][2][3][4][5][6]. In many cases, nanostructures are having improved electrical, mechanical and thermal properties compared to the conventional materials.…”