客座编辑: Rongchao Jin, Ph.D., Professor (金荣超教授) Guest Editor
Department of Chemistry
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA
专刊介绍
Inorganic nanoparticles are being intensely pursued in current nanoscience research. However, fundamental research is largely hampered by the imprecisions of nanoparticles, including polydispersity (e.g. a standard deviation of 5% even in highly monodisperse samples), unknown core/ligand interfaces, and elusive compositions of surface species on nanoparticles. Nanoscientists are frustrated by the fact that no two nanoparticles are the same. The imprecisions of nanoparticles preclude thorough understanding of many fundamental aspects of nanoparticles, such as the surface catalytic mechanism, interfacial charge transfer in energy flow, fluorescence blinking in quantum dots, and spin canting in magnetic nanoparticles. In these cases, the total structures (i.e., core plus surface) must be known for thorough understanding of such issues. Thus, controlling nanoparticles with atomic precision and solving their total structures have long been the major goals for nanoscientists. Recently, the goals have been partially fulfilled in gold and silver nanoparticles in the ultrasmall size regime (1-3 nm diameter, often called nanoclusters); however, major efforts are still needed for exploring the new properties of nanoclusters, pushing up the size limit, and extending the concept to other types of nanoparticles.
This Special Issue is intended to promote the “atomic precision” concept for nanoscience. Research themes covered in this Special Issue include i) the chemical synthesis of atomically precise nanoclusters and nanoparticles as well as the principles governing such syntheses, ii) atomic-level details of the core and core/ligand interfacial structures, iii) physical and chemical properties and correlation with structures, iv) theoretical analyses and the development of new computational methods for large systems, and v) exploration of applications of such new materials in catalysis, sensing, optics, energy conversion, etc. Research toward atomic precision should bring new opportunities to nanoscience not only in the pursuit of fundamental science but also in opening up new horizons for nanoscience.
