Manipulating Local Ligand Environments for the Controlled Nucleation of Metal Nanoparticles and their Assembly into Nanodendrites

摘要

One could argue that the synthesis of metal nanostructures with well-defined features remains an art, not a science, given our current understanding of how metal precursors are transformed into small metal clusters and eventually larger nanostructures. Here, we report a facile route to palladium nanodendrites and larger Pd bundles through the thermal decomposition of Pd precursors in only oleylamine. This simple, two-component system was designed to evaluate the effect of the local ligand environment on the nucleation of nanoparticles and their subsequent growth through either atomic addition or aggregation.