Coalescence of silver nanoparticles at room temperature: unusual crystal structure transformation and dendrite formation induced by self-assembly.
It was found that during the evaporation of water from a droplet of a silver nanoparticles dispersion a self-assembly process leads to the coalescence of the nanoparticles at room temperature and eventually results in a 3D, micrometer-sized dendrite. Direct in situ HR-TEM observation of coalescence events of individual nanoparticles revealed that during this process a transformation of the nanoparticles' crystal structure takes place, from the common fcc silver structure to the unusual hcp structure. It was found that even-though a majority of the nanoparticles in the dispersion have the fcc structure the obtained dendrites are characterized by the hcp structure, reflecting the crystal structure transformation due to the coalescence process.
Grouchko
Michael
M
Casali Institute for Applied Chemistry, The Unit for Nanocharacterization, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
Popov
Inna
I
Uvarov
Vladimir
V
Magdassi
Shlomo
S
Kamyshny
Alexander
A