title: Icosahedral face-centered cubic Fe nanoparticles: facile synthesis and characterization with aberration-corrected TEM.
abstract: Iron nanoparticles are highly desirable for their potential applications in magnetic and catalytic industry. However, their shape-controlled fabrication is still an important challenge. Here we successfully synthesized icosahedral face-centered cubic (fcc) Fe nanoparticles with size of 5-13 nm by a specifically designed thermodynamic governed synthetic route, which is facile but highly efficient and reproducible. With the aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the unique icosahedral structure's pseudo-2-fold, 3-fold, and pseudo-5-fold axes were directly observed for the first time and verified by computer simulation, which reveals that nanoparticles' orientations have a large impact on HRTEM images at ultrahigh resolution. It is expected that as-synthesized Fe nanoparticles with sharp corners and edges would be beneficial for tailoring chemical and physical properties at the nanoscale.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, The State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, Tsinghua University, Beijing National Center for Electron Microscopy, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ling
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Huimin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Hengqiang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.forename: Rong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Zhiying
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Guangwen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Zhida
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Yujia
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xiuliang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ma