title: Atomic-scale determination of surface facets in gold nanorods.
abstract: It is widely accepted that the physical properties of nanostructures depend on the type of surface facets. For Au nanorods, the surface facets have a major influence on crucial effects such as reactivity and ligand adsorption and there has been controversy regarding facet indexing. Aberration-corrected electron microscopy is the ideal technique to study the atomic structure of nanomaterials. However, these images correspond to two-dimensional (2D) projections of 3D nano-objects, leading to an incomplete characterization. Recently, much progress was achieved in the field of atomic-resolution electron tomography, but it is still far from being a routinely used technique. Here we propose a methodology to measure the 3D atomic structure of free-standing nanoparticles, which we apply to characterize the surface facets of Au nanorods. This methodology is applicable to a broad range of nanocrystals, leading to unique insights concerning the connection between the structure and properties of nanostructures.
authors.affiliation: Electron Microscopy for Materials Research (EMAT), University of Antwerp, Groenenborgerlaan 171, 2020 Antwerp, Belgium. sara.bals@ua.ac.be
authors.forename: Bart
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Goris
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bals
authors.forename: Wouter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Van den Broek
authors.forename: Enrique
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Carbó-Argibay
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gómez-Graña
authors.forename: Luis M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Liz-Marzán
authors.forename: Gustaaf
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Van Tendeloo