2020/08/28 by Abhinav Parakh, Sangryun Lee, Mehrdad T. Kiani +5
Chemistry · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemical engineering #Chemistry #Composite material #Crystallography #Engineering #Gold and Silver Nanoparticles Synthesis and Applications #Laser-Ablation Synthesis of Nanoparticles #Materials science #Nanocrystal #Nanotechnology #Stress (linguistics) #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #nanoparticles nucleation surface interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c03371
32 pages, 14 figures, and 1 movie (please open pdf with Adobe Acrobat Reader to see the embedded movie)
arxiv created 2020/08/28 · openalex publication_date 2020/10/05 · arxiv updated 2020/10/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Nanocrystals can exist in multiply twinned structures like icosahedron or single crystalline structures like cuboctahedron. Transformations between these structures can proceed through diffusion or displacive motion. Experimental studies on nanocrystal structural transformations have focused on high-temperature diffusion-mediated processes. Limited experimental evidence of displacive motion exists. We report structural transformation of 6 nm Au nanocrystals under nonhydrostatic pressure of 7.7 GPa in a diamond anvil cell that is driven by displacive motion. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy were used to detect the structural transformation from multiply twinned to single crystalline. Single crystalline nanocrystals were recovered after unloading, then quickly reverted to the multiply twinned state after dispersion in toluene. The dynamics of recovery was captured using TEM which showed surface recrystallization and rapid twin boundary motion. Molecular dynamics simulations showed that twin boundaries are unstable due to defects nucleated from the interior of the nanocrystal.