Surface structural characteristics and tunable electronic properties of wet-chemically prepared Pd nanoparticles

The ligand substitution reaction, Pd L(3,2,1)-edge and S K-edge x-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS), XAFS simulations, and valence-band and core-level x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) have been used to systematically study the surface chemical and electronic properties of wet-chemically prepared Pd nanoparticles of varied size, molecular capping, and metal composition. It was found that the replacement of weakly interacting capping molecules (amine and tetra-alkylphosphonium bromide) with strongly binding thiols caused a considerable change in the surface bonding of Pd nanoparticles. However, the Pd d-electron counts (number of d electrons) remained almost unchanged before and after ligand substitution, which is unexpected since Pd atoms normally lose electrons to the more electronegative S atoms. XAFS results and simulations provided useful insights into the surface structural characteristics of Pd nanoparticles and satisfactorily accounted for the unexpected d-electron behavior involved in the ligand substitution process. XPS valence and core-level spectra further revealed a size-dependent d-band narrowing and presented complementary information to XAFS about the surface electronic properties of Pd atoms. The small weakly bound Pd nanoparticles seem inevitably to have a net d-electron depletion due to the influence of the surface effect (chemical adsorption by oxygen), which is more significant than the d-electron enriching nanosize effect. However, it was demonstrated that by forming Pd-Ag alloy nanoparticles, a net increase of the Pd d-electron counts can be realized. Therefore, it is illustrated that by manipulating the surface, size, and alloying effects, the electronic properties of Pd nanoparticles can be possibly tuned.