Abstract
Precisely engineering heterostructured nanoparticles that incorporate different materials in specific configurations requires appropriate design guidelines and synthetic tools. Cation exchange reactions offer a capable pathway for rationally transforming simple nanoparticles into a large library of complex heterostructured products, but existing capabilities remain limited, leaving many compositions and architectures out of reach. Here, we establish a combinatorial solution chemistry platform to accelerate the discovery and rational synthesis of heterostructured nanoparticles. By introducing copper sulfide nanorods into mixtures of cations (Cd2+, Zn2+, Co2+, Ni2+, In3+, Ga3+) under purposely unoptimized conditions, many heterostructured metal sulfide products form simultaneously, maximizing product diversity. By modulating simple reaction variables, such as temperature, concentration, stoichiometry, choice of cations and morphology, we observe hundreds of products that are incompatible with existing design guidelines. We then translate these observations into scalable reactions to rationally produce high-yield samples with previously inaccessible features.
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Data availability
All source data and information needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are presented in the paper or in the Supplementary Information. Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Code availability
The Python script used to count and sort particles for some of the bar charts can be found at: https://github.com/RKatzChemComp/Particle-Sepration-and-Counting. A demonstration is provided at: https://github.com/RKatzChemComp/Particle-Sepration-and-Counting/tree/Demo. More information about this code can be found in the Particle Counting section in the Supplementary Information.
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Acknowledgements
Electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction data were acquired at the Materials Characterization Laboratory of the Penn State Materials Research Institute. Funding for this work was provided by the US National Science Foundation under grants DMR-1904122 and DMR-2210442.
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C.R.M., B.C.S. and R.E.S. conceived the concept. C.R.M. and R.E.S. designed the experiments and wrote the paper. C.R.M. synthesized and characterized the nanoparticle samples. R.R.K. performed image analysis.
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Nature Synthesis thanks Bryce Sadtler and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Alexandra Groves, in collaboration with the Nature Synthesis team.
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McCormick, C.R., Katzbaer, R.R., Steimle, B.C. et al. Combinatorial cation exchange for the discovery and rational synthesis of heterostructured nanorods. Nat. Synth 2, 152–161 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-022-00203-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-022-00203-4
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