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Single-element amorphous palladium nanoparticles formed via phase separation

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Abstract

Physically vitrifying amorphous single-element metal requires ultrahigh cooling rates, which are still unachievable for most of the closest-packed metals. Here, we report a facile chemical synthetic strategy for single-element amorphous palladium nanoparticles with a purity of 99.35 at.% ± 0.23 at.% from palladium—silicon liquid droplets. In-situ transmission electron microscopy directly detected the solidification of palladium and the separation of silicon. Further hydrogen absorption experiment showed that the amorphous palladium expanded little upon hydrogen uptake, exhibiting a great potential application for hydrogen separation. Our results provide insight into the formation of amorphous metal at nanoscale.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51602143, 51702150, 11874194, 11774142, and 11874194), the Science and Technology Innovation Committee Foundation of Shenzhen (Nos. KQTD2016022619565991, JCYJ20200109141205978, and ZDSYS20141118160434515), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (No. 2015A030308001), and the Leading Talents of Guangdong Province Program (No. 00201517). The authors thank Prof. Cai-Zhuang Wang, Prof. Meng Gu, Dr. Song Liu, Dr. Minghui Wu, Mr. Wei Li, and Mr. Yunhua He for helpful discussion. The authors are grateful for the Pico Center at SUSTech core research facilities. The computing time was supported by the Center for Computational Science and Engineering of Southern University of Science and Technology.

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Author notes

  1. Dong Sheng He and Yi Huang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pico Center and Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Dong Sheng He, Yi Huang, Xinyu Fan, Yunsheng Deng, Lin Xie, Yang Qiu, Li Huang & Jiaqing He

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA

    Benjamin D. Myers, Dieter Isheim & Vinayak P. Dravid

  3. Department of Chemistry and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Catalytic Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Guang-Jie Xia & Yang-Gang Wang

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Shaobo Han

  5. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Junhua Luan

  6. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Zengbao Jiao

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  1. Dong Sheng He
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Correspondence to Jiaqing He.

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He, D.S., Huang, Y., Myers, B.D. et al. Single-element amorphous palladium nanoparticles formed via phase separation. Nano Res. 15, 5575–5580 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4173-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4173-1

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