Abstract
Nanoscale materials are currently being exploited as active components in a wide range of technological applications in various fields, such as composite materials1,2, chemical sensing3, biomedicine4,5,6, optoelectronics7,8,9 and nanoelectronics10,11,12. Colloidal nanocrystals are promising candidates in these fields, due to their ease of fabrication and processibility. Even more applications and new functional materials might emerge if nanocrystals could be synthesized in shapes of higher complexity than the ones produced by current methods (spheres, rods, discs)13,14,15,16,17,18,19. Here, we demonstrate that polytypism, or the existence of two or more crystal structures in different domains of the same crystal, coupled with the manipulation of surface energy at the nanoscale, can be exploited to produce branched inorganic nanostructures controllably. For the case of CdTe, we designed a high yield, reproducible synthesis of soluble, tetrapod-shaped nanocrystals through which we can independently control the width and length of the four arms.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Morris, C.A., Anderson, M.L., Stroud, R.M., Merzbacher, C.I. & Rolison, D.R. Silica sol as a nanoglue: Flexible synthesis of composite aerogels. Science 284, 622–624 ( 1999).
Caruso, F. Hollow capsule processing through colloidal templating and self-assembly. Chem. Europ. J. 6, 413–419 ( 2000).
Kong, J. et al. Nanotube molecular wires as chemical sensors. Science 287, 622–625 ( 2000).
Bruchez, M., Moronne, M., Gin, P., Weiss, S. & Alivisatos, A.P. Semiconductor nanocrystals as fluorescent biological labels. Science 281, 2013–2016 ( 1998).
Chan, W.C.W. & Nie, S.M. Quantum dot bioconjugates for ultrasensitive nonisotopic detection. Science 281, 2016–2018 ( 1998).
Taton, T.A., Mirkin, C.A. & Letsinger, R.L. Scanometric DNA array detection with nanoparticle probes. Science 289, 1757–1760 ( 2000).
Colvin, V.L., Schlamp, M.C. & Alivisatos, A.P. Light-emitting diodes made from cadmium selenide nanocrystals and a semiconducting polymer. Nature 370, 354–357 ( 1994).
Huynh, W.U., Dittmer, J.J. & Alivisatos, A.P. Hybrid nanorod-polymer solar cells. Science 295, 2425–2427 ( 2002).
Klimov, V.I. et al. Optical gain and stimulated emission in nanocrystal quantum dots. Science 290, 314–317 ( 2000).
Fuhrer, M.S. et al. Crossed nanotube junctions. Science 288, 494–497 ( 2000).
Duan, X.F., Huang, Y., Cui, Y., Wang, J.F. & Lieber, C.M. Indium phosphide nanowires as building blocks for nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices. Nature 409, 66–69 ( 2001).
Gudiksen, M.S., Lauhon, L.J., Wang, J., Smith, D. & Lieber, C.M. Growth of nanowire superlattice structures for nanoscale photonics and electronics. Nature 415, 617–620 ( 2002).
Murray, C.B., Norris, D.J. & Bawendi, M.G. Synthesis and characterization of nearly monodisperse CdE (E = S, Se, Te) semiconductor nanocrystallites. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 115, 8706–8715 ( 1993).
Ahmadi, T.S., Wang, Z.L., Green, T.C., Henglein, A. & El-Sayed, M.A. Shape-controlled synthesis of colloidal platinum nanoparticles. Science 272, 1924–1926 ( 1996).
Yu, Y.Y., Chang, S., Lee, C.J. & Wang, C.R.C. Gold nanorods: electrochemical synthesis and optical properties. J. Phys. Chem. B 101, 6661–6664 ( 1997).
Peng, X.G. et al. Shape control of CdSe nanocrystals. Nature 404, 59–61 ( 2000).
Jun, Y.W., Lee, S.M., Kang, N.J. & Cheon, J. Controlled synthesis of multi-armed CdS nanorod architectures using monosurfactant system. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 123, 5150–5151 ( 2001).
Shevchenko, E. et al. Colloidal crystals of monodisperse FePt nanoparticles grown by a three-layer technique of controlled oversaturation. Adv. Mater. 14, 287–290 ( 2002).
Ni, Y.H., Ge, X.W., Zhang, Z.C. & Ye, Q. Fabrication and characterization of the plate-shaped gamma-Fe2O3 nanocrystals. Chem. Mater. 14, 1048–1052 ( 2002).
Park, C.H., Cheong, B.H., Lee, K.H. & Chang, K.J. Structural and electronic properties of cubic, 2H, 4H, and 6H SiC. Phys. Rev. B 49, 4485–4493 ( 1994).
Yeh, C.Y., Lu, Z.W., Froyen, S. & Zunger, A. Zinc-blende-wurtzite polytypism in semiconductors. Phys. Rev. B 46, 10086–10097 ( 1992).
Ito, T. Simple criterion for wurtzite-zinc-blende polytypism in semiconductors. Jpn J. Appl. Phys. Part 2 37, L1217–L1220 ( 1998).
Mason, B.J. Snow crystals, natural and man-made. Contemp. Phys. 33, 227–243 ( 1992).
Jun, Y.W., Jung, Y.Y. & Cheon, J. Architectural control of magnetic semiconductor nanocrystals. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 124, 615–619 ( 2002).
Chen, M. et al. Synthesis of rod-, twinrod-, and tetrapod-shaped CdS nanocrystals using a highly oriented solvothermal recrystallization technique. J. Mater. Chem. 12, 748–753 ( 2002).
Dai, Y., Zhang, Y., Li, Q.K. & Nan, C.W. Synthesis and optical properties of tetrapod-like zinc oxide nanorods. Chem. Phys. Lett. 358, 83–86 ( 2002).
Manna, L., Scher, E.C. & Alivisatos, A.P. Synthesis of soluble and processable rod-, arrow-, teardrop-, and tetrapod-shaped CdSe nanocrystals. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 122, 12700–12706 ( 2000).
Bandaranayake, R.J., Wen, G.W., Lin, J.Y., Jiang, H.X. & Sorensen, C.M. Structural phase-behavior in II-VI semiconductor nanoparticles. Appl. Phys. Lett. 67, 831–833 ( 1995).
Peng, Z.A. & Peng, X.G. Formation of high-quality CdTe, CdSe, and CdS nanocrystals using CdO as precursor. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 123, 183–184 ( 2001).
Peng, Z.A. & Peng, X.G. Mechanisms of the shape evolution of CdSe nanocrystals. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 123, 1389–1395 ( 2001).
Peng, Z.A. & Peng, X.G. Nearly monodisperse and shape-controlled CdSe nanocrystals via alternative routes: Nucleation and growth. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 124, 3343–3353 ( 2002).
Li, L.S., Hu, J.T., Yang, W.D. & Alivisatos, A.P. Band gap variation of size- and shape-controlled colloidal CdSe quantum rods. Nano Lett. 1, 349–351 ( 2001).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, of the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098 and by Grant No. 066995 through the University of Southern California, under prime sponsor DOD Advanced Research Projects Agency. D.S.M. gratefully acknowledges fellowship support from the US department of Defense. We would like to thank R. Zalpuri and G. Vrdoljak at the UC Berkeley Electron Microscope Lab for their assistance and the use of their TEM. We thank J. W. Jun and M. F. Casula for beneficial discussions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Manna, L., Milliron, D., Meisel, A. et al. Controlled growth of tetrapod-branched inorganic nanocrystals. Nature Mater 2, 382–385 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat902
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat902
This article is cited by
-
Synthesis of branched silica nanotrees using a nanodroplet sequential fusion strategy
Nature Synthesis (2023)
-
Multimodal imaging of cubic Cu2O@Au nanocage formation via galvanic replacement using X-ray ptychography and nano diffraction
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
Photoluminescent, “ice-cream cone” like Cu–In–(Zn)–S/ZnS nanoheterostructures
Scientific Reports (2022)
-
Past, present and future of indium phosphide quantum dots
Nano Research (2022)
-
In-situ growth of heterophase Ni nanocrystals on graphene for enhanced catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol
Nano Research (2022)