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

拟议的研究福尔斯属于纳米科学和纳米技术的快速增长的领域，并围绕金属纳米粒子（NP），纳米技术的基本组成部分的研究中心。近二十年来，金属纳米粒子的研究呈爆炸式增长，在生物传感、纳米电子学、药物输送和催化等纳米技术领域具有广阔的应用前景。为了改善金属纳米颗粒在实际应用中的性能，通常优选选择具有良好定制的原子结构（例如核-壳、合金和核-合金壳）的双金属和三金属纳米颗粒。这些多组分纳米颗粒可以结合联合收割机许多与纳米颗粒中的每个组分相关的所需功能，例如高催化活性、磁各向异性、生物相容性等，尽管具有这些优点，但合成和表征具有良好原子结构和电子性质的多组分金属纳米颗粒仍然是一个重要的挑战。为此，拟议的研究旨在通过开发有效的NPs合成方法，并通过强大的X射线光谱技术深入了解其结构-性质关系，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。特别强调将放在研究的超顺磁性纳米粒子含有至少一种磁性金属（如铁，钴，镍）。这些基础研究将与纳米粒子在催化和生物技术中的一些创新应用的探索相结合。

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.