Strategies toward Hierarchy and Compositional Complexity in Metal Nanocrystal Synthesis

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Nature is awe-inspiring for the intricate and hierarchical forms adopted by many of its materials; Such complex structures give rise to the properties that make many materials useful. Professor Skrabalak and her research group at Indiana University are developing chemical processes that introduce structural complexity to modern nanomaterials. This objective arises because the size, shape, and spatial arrangement of nanoscale materials dictate their properties. This research is expanding the synthetic toolkit in order to achieve nanomaterials by design for applications in energy conversion, catalysis, plasmonics, secured electronics, nanomedicine, and more. This multidisciplinary project provides to graduate and undergraduate students (including members of underrepresented groups) research opportunities and training in a range of synthetic, analytical, and imaging techniques. In addition, the research team is collaborating with science educators at WonderLab - a children's science museum in Bloomington, Indiana - to provide an interactive display that teaches about nanoscience through art. Professor Skrabalak also writes tutorials for the Joint US-Africa Materials Institute (JUAMI). These tutorials include lectures on nanomaterials for ~60 East African PhD students and U.S. participants.With the support from the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry Program of the NSF Division of Chemistry, the Skrabalak group is developing synthetic tools in order to achieve nanostructures with unprecedented hierarchy and compositional complexity. Three aims are being addressed. The first objective is to demonstrate sequential seeded growth as a general route toward nanocrystals with different hierarchies and chiralities. The second objective is to synthesize new bimetallic heterostructures with high refractive index sensitivity and structural stability through the use of kinetically controlled deposition routes on shape-controlled seeds. The third objective is to elucidate the mechanism of galvanic replacement between intermetallic seeds to access new trimetallic compositions and heterostructures with intermetallic domains. The optical, plasmonic, and catalytic properties of achieved nanostructures are being examined in order to elucidate how complex structure and composition contribute to a material's properties.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.