[Zurück]

D. Thomele, G. Bourret, J. Bernardi, M. Bockstedte, O. Diwald:
"Hydroxylation Induced Alignment of Metal Oxide Nanocubes";
Angewandte Chemie - International Edition, 56 (2017), S. 1407 - 1410.

Water vapor is ubiquitous under ambient conditions
and may alter the shape of nanoparticles. How to utilize water
adsorption for nanomaterial functionality and structure formation,
however, is a yet unexplored field. Herein, we report
the use of water vapor to induce the self-organization of MgO
nanocubes into regularly staggered one-dimensional structures.
This transformation evolves via an initial alignment of the
MgO cubes, the formation of intermediate elongated Mg(OH)2
structures, and their reconversion into MgO cubes arranged in
staggered structures. Ab initio DFT modelling identifies surface-
energy changes associated with the cube surface hydration
and hydroxylation to promote the uncommon staggered
stacked assembly of the cubes. This first observation of metal
oxide nanoparticle self-organization occurring outside a bulk
solution may pave novel routes for inducing texture in ceramics
and represents a great test-bed for new surface-science
concepts.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201608538