Structure-conserving spontaneous transformations between nanoparticles

K. R. Krishnadas, Ananya Baksi, Atanu Ghosh, Ganapati Natarajan and Thalappil Pradeep ()
Additional contact information
K. R. Krishnadas: DST Unit of Nanoscience (DST UNS) and Thematic Unit of Excellence (TUE), Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Ananya Baksi: DST Unit of Nanoscience (DST UNS) and Thematic Unit of Excellence (TUE), Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Atanu Ghosh: DST Unit of Nanoscience (DST UNS) and Thematic Unit of Excellence (TUE), Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Ganapati Natarajan: DST Unit of Nanoscience (DST UNS) and Thematic Unit of Excellence (TUE), Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Thalappil Pradeep: DST Unit of Nanoscience (DST UNS) and Thematic Unit of Excellence (TUE), Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Ambient, structure- and topology-preserving chemical reactions between two archetypal nanoparticles, Ag25(SR)18 and Au25(SR)18, are presented. Despite their geometric robustness and electronic stability, reactions between them in solution produce alloys, AgmAun(SR)18 (m+n=25), keeping their M25(SR)18 composition, structure and topology intact. We demonstrate that a mixture of Ag25(SR)18 and Au25(SR)18 can be transformed to any arbitrary alloy composition, AgmAun(SR)18 (n=1–24), merely by controlling the reactant compositions. We capture one of the earliest events of the process, namely the formation of the dianionic adduct, (Ag25Au25(SR)36)2−, by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. Molecular docking simulations and density functional theory (DFT) calculations also suggest that metal atom exchanges occur through the formation of an adduct between the two clusters. DFT calculations further confirm that metal atom exchanges are thermodynamically feasible. Such isomorphous transformations between nanoparticles imply that microscopic pieces of matter can be transformed completely to chemically different entities, preserving their structures, at least in the nanometric regime.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13447 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms13447

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13447

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().