Abstract
Colloidal synthesis of metal nanocrystals often relies on using reduction kinetics to manipulate their size, shape, internal structure and composition. Whereas the first three features can all be readily manipulated, it remains challenging to control the composition of nanocrystals because the reduction rate, and thus the production rate of atoms, follows an exponential decay during the synthesis. By stabilizing the reduction rate of a precursor in the steady state, dropwise addition has emerged as a transformative route for the colloidal synthesis of nanocrystals. This Perspective highlights the advantages of dropwise addition over traditional one-shot injection for controlling the composition and elemental distribution of bi- and multi-metallic nanocrystals. Our analysis demonstrates the promise of dropwise addition for achieving the deterministic synthesis of complex nanocrystals with controlled compositions for a range of applications, especially those related to catalysis and energy conversion.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by a research grant (DMR 2333595) from the NSF and start-up funds from the Georgia Institute of Technology. We are grateful to our co-workers and collaborators for their invaluable contributions to this project.
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This Perspective was conceived by Y.X. and was written by C.W., J.H. and Y.X.
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Nature Synthesis thanks Xuelian Chen and Svetlana Neretina for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Alexandra Groves, in collaboration with the Nature Synthesis team.
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Wang, C., He, J. & Xia, Y. Controlling the composition and elemental distribution of bi- and multi-metallic nanocrystals via dropwise addition. Nat. Synth 3, 1076–1082 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-024-00600-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-024-00600-x
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