Emergence of hierarchical structural complexities in nanoparticles and their assembly

• DOI: 10.1126/science.aak9750
• Publication Date: 2016-12-22T19:40:44Z
• Authors: Chenjie Zeng; Yuxiang Chen; Kristin Kirschbaum; Kelly J. Lambright; Rongchao Jin
• Keywords: 01 natural sciences; 0104 chemical sciences

Probing packing rules

The crystals of a well-defined ligand-covered gold nanoparticle can reveal how packing into a lattice happens. Zeng et al. synthesized nanoparticles with a 246-atom gold core surrounded by 80 4-methylbenzenethiol ligands. These nearly spherical nanoparticles did not pack into a cubic arrangement but instead formed a lower-symmetry monoclinic structure. A hierarchy of interparticle ligand interactions controlled the packing, including sets of chiral packing arrangements that reversed between layers.

Science , this issue p. 1580