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Single-atom alloys prepared by two-step thermal evaporation

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Abstract

Single-atom alloys (SAAs) have gained significant attention due to their remarkable atomic utilization efficiency, interactions between single atoms (SAs) and metal supports, and free-atom-like electronic structure of dopant elements. In this work, we observed the formation of SAs in pre-deposited metal particles by a two-step thermal evaporation technique, thereby establishing the first instance of discovering SAAs by thermal evaporation. The discovery of SAAs by thermal evaporation extends the range of SAAs preparation methods to include this traditional synthetic technique, which offers convenience, cost-efficiency, and universality. The formation mechanism of SAAs prepared using this technique was elucidated by density functional theory calculations. It was demonstrated that thermal evaporation can be utilized to prepare SAAs with multiple SAs, further highlighting its universal applicability.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52172046).

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Author notes

  1. Honglin Wang and Jing Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Honglin Wang, Jing Li, Meirong Huang, Jizhe Cui, Zhiying Cheng, Rong Yu & Hongwei Zhu

  2. State Key Lab of Solid Waste Reuse for Building Materials, Beijing Building Materials Academy of Science Research, Beijing, 100041, China

    Jing Li

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  1. Honglin Wang
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Correspondence to Hongwei Zhu.

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Wang, H., Li, J., Huang, M. et al. Single-atom alloys prepared by two-step thermal evaporation. Nano Res. 17, 2808–2813 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6146-4

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