Precision Fabrication Of Nanostructures Based On The Competition Of Growth And Self-assembling

The skill of material fabrication in some way determines the properties and applications of the material.Although various materials and various morphologies have been achieved,high quality of nanocrystals is still the bottleneck in some hot topics such as catalysis,energy conversion,environment issues,etc.Fundamentally,the morphology and structure of a certain nanomaterial are determined by thermodynamics and kinetics.However,it is almost impossible to design a structure just from thermodynamics and kinetics due to the complicated synthesis system and affecting parameters.Moreover,atoms or ions may undergo different pathways to achieve the morphology.Thus,it should be necessary to understand the properties of different pathways,in order to achieve precision fabrication.After analyzing and summarizing a lot of experiment results,it was found that the competition between growth and self-assembling(SA)of building blocks had great effects on the precision fabrication of different morphologies.According to the classic nucleation theory,spiral nanosheets could be grown.When SA was introduced into such synthesis,single-walled nanotubes can be achieved with the help of the inherent flexible nature of sub-nanometer feature.When growth and SA were separated,mesocrystal can be precisely synthesized.Moreover,surfactant-like SA of small nanoparticles can lead to inorganic multi-walled nanotubes and other morphologies.It was found that the surface coverage of ligands on nanoparticles played pivotal roles in controlling the turnover of growth and SA,in the terms of good solvent and poor solvent system,precursor concentrations,etc.Precision fabrication helps not only to gain fundamental knowledge,but also applications.After analyzing the basic process of electrochemistry,some strategies to optimize properties have been summarized,then testified in oxygen evolution reaction using the synthesized materials.The deep analysis on structure-property relations leads to the realizing of self-optimization process in electrochemistry.