The understanding of the atomic-scale structural and chemical ordering in supported nanosized alloy particles is fundamental for achieving active catalysts by design. This report shows how such knowledge can be obtained by a combination of techniques including X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and synchrotron radiation based X-ray fine structure absorption spectroscopy and high-energy X-ray diff...

A key challenge to the exploration of electrochemical energy conversion and storage is the ability to engineer the catalyst with low cost, high activity and high stability. Existing catalysts often contain a high percentage of noble metals such as Pt and Pd. One important approach to this challenge involves alloying noble metals with other transition metals in the form of a nanoalloy, which pro...

Although the vapor-liquid-solid growth of semiconductor nanowire is a non-equilibrium process, the equilibrium phase diagram of binary alloy provides important guidance on the growth conditions, such as the temperature and the equilibrium composition of the alloy. Given the small dimensions of the alloy seeds and the nanowires, the known phase diagram of bulk binary alloy cannot be expected to ...

Chemical and physical properties of binary metallic nanoparticles (nanoalloys) are to a great extent defined by their chemical ordering, i.e. the pattern in which atoms of the two elements are located in a given crystal lattice. The reliable determination of the lowest-energy chemical ordering is a challenge that impedes in-depth studies of several-nm large bimetallic particles. We propose a me...

Due to the great potential to improve catalytic performance, gold (Au) and palladium (Pd) bimetallic catalysts have prompted structure-controlled synthesis of Au-Pd nanoalloys bounded by high-index facets. In this work, we prepared Au-Pd bimetallic nanoflowers (NFs) with a uniform size, well-defined dendritic morphology, and homogeneous alloy structure in an aqueous solution by seed-mediated sy...

Ostwald ripening has been broadly studied because it plays a determinant role in the evolution of cluster size during both chemical and physical synthesis of nanoparticles. This thermoactivated process causes large particles to grow, drawing material from the smaller particles, which shrink. However, this phenomenon becomes more complex when considering the coarsening of metallic alloy clusters...

We report an approach to enhance simultaneously luminescence and SERS signals with a single excitation wavelength by co-encapsulating silicon quantum dots and Au-Ag alloy nanoparticles encoded with Raman reporter molecules inside polymeric nanoparticles. The SERS-luminescence enhancement exploits the large Stokes shift of silicon quantum dots, which allows 'room' for the display of a Raman spec...