Hydroxylation Induced Alignment of Metal Oxide Nanocubes

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：MSc. Daniel Thomele ; Dr. Gilles R. Bourret ; Prof. Dr. Johannes Bernardi ; Prof. Dr. Michel Bockstedte and Prof. Dr. Oliver Diwald
• 刊名：Angewandte Chemie International Edition
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 24, 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：56
• 期：5
• 页码：1407-1410
• 全文大小：3773K
• ISSN：1521-3773

文摘

Water vapor is ubiquitous under ambient conditions and may alter the shape of nanoparticles. How to utilize water adsorption for nanomaterial functionality and structure formation, however, is a yet unexplored field. Herein, we report the use of water vapor to induce the self-organization of MgO nanocubes into regularly staggered one-dimensional structures. This transformation evolves via an initial alignment of the MgO cubes, the formation of intermediate elongated Mg(OH)₂ structures, and their reconversion into MgO cubes arranged in staggered structures. Ab initio DFT modelling identifies surface-energy changes associated with the cube surface hydration and hydroxylation to promote the uncommon staggered stacked assembly of the cubes. This first observation of metal oxide nanoparticle self-organization occurring outside a bulk solution may pave novel routes for inducing texture in ceramics and represents a great test-bed for new surface-science concepts.