Tailoring the local/atomic structure and electronic properties of nanoparticles: from fundamental studies to potential applications in catalysis and biotechnology

拟议的研究属于纳米科学和纳米技术快速发展的领域，并围绕纳米技术的基本组成部分金属纳米粒子（NPs）的研究。在过去的二十年里，金属纳米粒子的研究得到了爆炸性的发展，在纳米技术的各个领域，如生物传感、纳米电子学、药物传递和催化等方面显示出了广阔的应用前景。为了在实际应用中提高金属NPs的性能，通常选择具有良好原子结构的双金属和三金属NPs，如核-壳、合金和核-合金壳。这些多组分NPs可能结合了与NPs中每个组分相关的许多所需功能，如高催化反应性、磁各向异性、生物相容性等。尽管具有这些优势，但合成和表征具有良好原子结构和电子特性的多组分金属纳米粒子仍然是一个重要的挑战。为此，提出的研究旨在通过开发高效的NPs合成方法，并通过强大的x射线光谱技术提供对其结构-性质关系的见解，提高在原子水平上精确控制多组分金属NPs结构和电子性质的能力。特别强调的是对含有至少一种磁性金属（如铁、钴、镍）的超顺磁性NPs的研究。这些基础研究将与NPs在催化和生物技术方面的一些创新应用的探索一起进行。

The proposed research falls into the rapidly growing area of nanoscience and nanotechnology and centers around the studies of metal nanoparticles (NPs), the fundamental building blocks of nanotechnology. The past two decades have witnessed a explosive growth of research in metal nanoparticles (NPs), which show promising applications in a variety of areas in nanotechnology such as biosensing, nanoelectronics, drug delivery and catalysis. In order to improve the performance of metal NPs in practical applications, selection of bimetallic and trimetallic NPs with well-tailored atomic structures, such as core-shell, alloy and core-alloyed shell, is often preferred. These multicomponent NPs may combine many desired functionalities associated with each component in the NPs, such as high catalytic reactivity, magnetic anisotropy, biocompatability and so on. In spite of these advantages, it remains an important challenge to synthesize and characterize multicomponent metal NPs with well-tailored atomic structure and electronic properties. Towards this end, the proposed research is intended to improve the ability of precise control of the structure and electronic properties of multi-component metal NPs at atomic level by developing efficient synthetic methodology for the NPs and by providing insights into their structure-property relationship with powerful X-ray spectroscopy techniques. Particular emphasis will be placed in the studies of superparamagnetic NPs containing at least one magnetic metal (e.g. Fe, Co, Ni). These fundamental studies will be carried out in conjunction with the exploration of some innovative applications of the NPs in catalysis and biotechnology.