Exploring Multinary Nanoparticles by Combinatorial Sputtering into Ionic Liquids and Advanced Transmission Electron Microscopy

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This project addresses the synthesis and characterization of multinary nanoparticles by combinatorial sputtering into ionic liquids and their atomic scale characterization using advanced transmission electron microscopy techniques. Whereas elemental nanoparticles have been studied a lot, the exploration of multinary nanoparticles is challenging as their synthesis usually requires complex chemistry. In contrast the synthesis of multinary nanoparticles by combinatorial sputtering into ionic liquids enables an efficient exploration of multinary nanoparticles. Unexplored multinary nanoparticles may offer interesting structural and functional properties. Therefore, the existence range of multinary nanoparticles and their properties will be explored for selected systems. The project will start with unary systems (e.g. Au, Pt, Pd, Ru), then binary systems (e.g. Ni-Ti, Ti-Ta, Fe-Pd, Au-Pt, Cu-Ru) and finally ternary systems (Ti-Ni-X). The focus is on systems which can show reversible phase transformations. These will be studied as example systems for functional nanoparticles. The main goal is to understand which materials can be fabricated as sputtered nanoparticles into which ionic liquids. Furthermore, we expect to clarify if thermoelastic martensitic transformations and/or reversible twinning can occur in these nanoparticles. The result in form of relations between the observed nanostructures and the corresponding phase diagrams will be useful for future application of combinatorial sputtering into ionic liquids for further alloy systems. Furthermore fundamental aspects of the nucleation and growth mechanism of multinary nanoparticles as well as phase transformation will be studied using in-situ high resolution transmission electron microscopy.