Ben Treml’s paper on ‘connecting the particles in the box’ is published in Scientific Reports

Breakthroughs in the creation of materials with properties by design continue to emerge from our ability to precisely control size, shape and composition of materials at the nanometer level.  Assembling these materials into multi-component superlattices opens new horizons to create new materials with unprecedented properties. Controlling the interactions between nanocrystals in the superlattice critically depends on improved understanding of the local structure of the connections between the dots.

The results presented Ben’s paper  provide insights into the structure of binary nanocrystal superlattices at an unprecedented level of detail. We combine synchrotron-based X-ray scattering and molecular dynamics simulation to describe the structure of NCs in the hexamer of an AB₆ binary superlattice. We apply this knowledge to demonstrate, for the first time, how the AB₆ superlattice can be used as a ‘nanoreactor’ to probe the structural evolution of the body-centered hexamer into a mesostructured cluster. We point to the successful demonstration of ‘connecting the particles in the box’ as an exciting new avenue to create and study novel materials based on precisely defined clusters of nanocrystal.

Check out the paper for more details:  doi:10.1038/srep06731