Molecular Foundry Seminar

"Nucleation Engineering for Controlled Nanoparticle Synthesis"

Yuegang Sun, Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory
Tuesday, August 9th at 1:00 pm, Bldg. 67 - 3111

View the Foundry Seminar Schedule

Abstract:

Synthesis of colloidal nanoparticles with tailored properties provides the foundation for exploring their applications in many promising areas, such as energy harvesting/conversion/storage, catalysis, electronics, etc. In this presentation, I will first highlight a number of guidelines that allow us to engineer the critical nucleation steps involved in the growth of nanoparticles by taking the synthesis of silver nanoparticles with controlled sizes and morphologies as an example. In the middle part of the presentation, a couple of synchrotron x-ray techniques including time-resolved high-energy x-ray diffraction and in-situ transmission x-ray microscopy will be discussed to show their promise in probing the growth of nanoparticles and chemical transformation of nanoparticles in real time. Finally, exceptional size-dependence of optical properties of the as-synthesized silver nanoparticles will be emphasized to shed a light on how to use the well-synthesized nanoparticles as a platform to discover the unique properties associated with the nanometer world.

Use of the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.