Plasma-Assisted Dissociation of Organometallic Vapors for Continuous, Gas-Phase Preparation of Multimetallic Nanoparticles

摘要

Metal nanoparticles (NPs) are characterized by novel electronic, optical, magnetic, and catalytic properties radically different from their bulk counterparts. A special class of metal NPs because of their unique multifunctional and synergistic properties is multimetallic NPs which are composed of two or more distinct metal elements with alloyed, core-shell, or other architectures. Despite the development of numerous synthetic routes for metal NP synthesis, the preparation of multimetallic NPs with controlled size, composition, morphology, and purity remains a significant challenge. Broadly speaking, multimetallic NPs have been synthesized by two strategies, that is, either in the liquid or gas phase. Liquid-phase methods involve the reduction of a metal salt dissolved in solution by a chemical reducing agent, such as NaBH4.