Camouflaging Structural Diversity: Co-crystallization of Two Different Nanoparticles Having Different Cores But the...

Area of Science:

• * Inorganic Chemistry
• * Nanotechnology
• * Materials Science

Background:

• * Ligand-protected nanoscale silver clusters are of significant interest.
• * Synthesizing clusters with identical shells but varying cores presents a challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• * To simultaneously synthesize and characterize two distinct silver nanoclusters, Ag46 and Ag40.
• * To investigate their co-crystallization behavior and structural differences.
• * To analyze their optical properties and compare them with theoretical calculations.

Main Methods:

• * Simultaneous synthesis of silver nanoclusters.
• * Co-crystallization and structural analysis.
• * Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) for molecular formula confirmation.
• * Optical spectroscopy and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) for spectral analysis.

Main Results:

• * Successful simultaneous synthesis of Ag46 and Ag40 nanoclusters with identical Ag32S24P8 shells.
• * Co-crystallization of both clusters with 50% occupancy each.
• * Ag46 features an Ag14 core (face-centered cube), while Ag40 contains a novel Ag8 core (simple cube).
• * Unique optical spectral features were observed and correlated with TD-DFT calculations.

Conclusions:

• * Demonstrated the co-crystallization of two distinct silver nanoclusters with shared shells but different cores.
• * Provided detailed structural and optical characterization of these novel silver clusters.
• * Highlighted the utility of ESI-MS and TD-DFT in analyzing complex nanomaterials.