Article abstract


Nature Materials 6, 900 - 907 (2007)
Published online: 16 September 2007 | doi:10.1038/nmat2004

Subject Categories: Optical, photonic and optoelectronic materials | Nanoscale materials

Large triangular single crystals formed by mild annealing of self-organized silver nanocrystals

A. Courty, A.-I. Henry, N. Goubet & M.-P. Pileni


Nanocrystal organizations represent a new generation of materials with specific properties compared with those of isolated nanocrystals and of the bulk material. Here, we present the first intrinsic crystalline growth properties of highly ordered mono- and multilayers of 5 nm silver nanocrystals. Triangular single crystals with face-centred-cubic structures are obtained by annealing the ordered nanocrystals under atmospheric pressure at 50 °C. The triangles are mixed with well-crystallized coalesced particles of various shapes. Their size depends on the initial nanocrystal ordering range on the substrate, which is local on amorphous carbon and highly extended on highly oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG). Hence, the single-crystal size is larger on HOPG than on amorphous carbon. These observations show that the crystalline growth properties of silver nanocrystals can be tailored by controlling their organization. Furthermore, on HOPG an epitaxial orientation of the triangles is observed.

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  1. Laboratoire des Matériaux Mesoscopiques et Nanométriques (LM2N), UMR CNRS 7070, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, bât F, BP 52, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France

Correspondence to: M.-P. Pileni e-mail: pileni@sri.jussieu.fr



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