Abstract
The development of nanocrystals has been intensively pursued, not only for their fundamental scientific interest, but also for many technological applications1,2,3. The synthesis of monodisperse nanocrystals (size variation <5%) is of key importance, because the properties of these nanocrystals depend strongly on their dimensions. For example, the colour sharpness of semiconductor nanocrystal-based optical devices is strongly dependent on the uniformity of the nanocrystals3,4,5,6, and monodisperse magnetic nanocrystals are critical for the next-generation multi-terabit magnetic storage media7,8,9. For these monodisperse nanocrystals to be used, an economical mass-production method needs to be developed. Unfortunately, however, in most syntheses reported so far, only sub-gram quantities of monodisperse nanocrystals were produced. Uniform-sized nanocrystals of CdSe (refs 10,11) and Au (refs 12,13) have been produced using colloidal chemical synthetic procedures. In addition, monodisperse magnetic nanocrystals such as Fe (refs 14,15), Co (refs 16–18), γ-Fe2O3 (refs 19,20), and Fe3O4 (refs 21,22) have been synthesized by using various synthetic methods23. Here, we report on the ultra-large-scale synthesis of monodisperse nanocrystals using inexpensive and non-toxic metal salts as reactants. We were able to synthesize as much as 40 g of monodisperse nanocrystals in a single reaction, without a size-sorting process. Moreover, the particle size could be controlled simply by varying the experimental conditions. The current synthetic procedure is very general and nanocrystals of many transition metal oxides were successfully synthesized using a very similar procedure.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Schmid, G. Nanoparticles: From Theory to Application (Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2004).
Klabunde, K. J. Nanoscale Materials in Chemistry (Wiley-Interscience, New York, 2001).
Alivisatos, A. P. Semiconductor clusters, nanocrystals, and quantum dots. Science 271, 933–937 (1996).
Nirmal, M. & Brus, L. Luminescence photophysics in semiconductor nanocrystals. Acc. Chem. Res. 32, 407–414 (1999).
Murray, C. B., Kagan, C. R. & Bawendi, M. G. Synthesis and characterization of monodisperse nanocrystals and close-packed nanocrystal assemblies. Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci. 30, 545–610 (2000).
Rogach, A. L. et al. Organization of matter on different size scales: monodisperse nanocrystals and their superstructures. Adv. Funct. Mater. 12, 653–664 (2002).
Sun, S., Murray, C. B. Weller, D., Folks, L. & Moser, A. Monodisperse FePt nanoparticles and ferromagnetic FePt nanocrystal superlattices. Science 287, 1989–1992 (2000).
Speliotis, D. E. Magnetic recording beyond the first 100 (invited). J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 193, 29–35 (1999).
O'Handley, R. C. Modern Magnetic Materials (Wiley, New York, 1999).
Murray, C. B., Norris, D. J. & Bawendi, M. G. Synthesis and characterization of nearly monodisperse CdE (E = S, Se, Te) semiconductor nanocrystallites. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 115, 8706–8715 (1993).
Peng, X., Wickham, J. & Alivisatos, A. P. Kinetics of II-VI and III-V colloidal semiconductor nanocrystal growth: “focusing” of size distributions. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 120, 5343–5344 (1998).
Stoeva, S., Klabunde, K. J., Sorensen, C. M. & Dragieva, I. Gram-scale synthesis of monodisperse gold colloids by the solvated metal atom dispersion method and digestive ripening and their organization into two- and three-dimensional structures. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 124, 2305–2311 (2002).
Jana, N. R. & Peng, X. Single-phase and gram-scale routes toward nearly monodisperse Au and other noble metal nanocrystals. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 14280–14281 (2003).
Park, S.-J. et al. Synthesis and magnetic studies of uniform iron nanorods and nanospheres. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 112, 8581–8582 (2000).
Dumestre, F., Chaudret, B. Amiens, C., Renaud, P. & Fejes, P. Superlattices of iron nanocubes synthesized from Fe[N(SiMe3)2]2 . Science 303, 821–823 (2004).
Sun, S. & Murray, C. B. Synthesis of monodisperse cobalt nanocrystals and their assembly into magnetic superlattices (invited). J. Appl. Phys. 85, 4325–4390 (1999).
Puntes, V. F., Krishnan, K. M. & Alivisatos, A. P. Colloidal nanocrystal shape and size control: the case of cobalt. Science 291, 2115–2117 (2001).
Dumestre, F. et al. Shape control of thermodynamically stable cobalt nanorods through organometallic chemistry. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn 41, 4286–4289 (2002).
Hyeon, T., Lee, S. S., Park, J., Chung, Y. & Na, H. B. Synthesis of highly crystalline and monodisperse maghemite nanocrystallites without a size-selection process. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 123, 12798–12801 (2001).
Rockenberger, J., Scher, E. C. & Alivisatos, A. P. A new nonhydrolytic single-precursor approach to surfactant-capped nanocrystals of transition metal oxides. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 121, 11595–11596 (1999).
Sun, S. et al. Monodisperse MFe2O4 (M = Fe, Co, Mn) nanoparticles. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 273–279 (2004).
Pileni, M. P. The role of soft colloidal templates in controlling the size and shape of inorganic nanocrystals. Nature Mater. 2, 145–150 (2003).
Hyeon, T. Chemical synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles. Chem. Comm. 927–934 (2003).
Sugimoto, T. Monodispersed Particles (Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, 2001).
Kim, S. W. et al. Synthesis of monodisperse palladium nanoparticles. Nano Lett. 3, 1289–1291 (2003).
Hyeon, T. et al. Synthesis of highly crystalline and monodisperse cobalt ferrite nanocrystals. J. Phys. Chem. B 106, 6831–6833 (2002).
Joo, J. et al. Multigram scale synthesis and characterization of monodisperse tetragonal zirconia nanocrystals. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 6553–6557 (2003).
Joo, J. et al. Generalized and facile synthesis of semiconducting metal sulfide nanocrystals. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 11100–11105 (2003).
Peng, X. Green chemical approaches toward high-quality semiconductor nanocrystals. Chem. Eur. J. 8, 334–339 (2002).
Acknowledgements
T.H. would like to thank the financial support from the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology through the National Creative Research Initiative Program. J.G.P. would like to thank the financial support by the KOSEF through the Center for Strongly Correlated Materials Research at the Seoul National University. J.H.P. would like to thank the financial support by KISTEP through X-ray/particle-beam Nanocharacterization Program.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Park, J., An, K., Hwang, Y. et al. Ultra-large-scale syntheses of monodisperse nanocrystals. Nature Mater 3, 891–895 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1251
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1251
This article is cited by
-
Ultrasmall Fe3O4 nanoparticles self-assembly induced dual-mode T1/T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and enhanced tumor synergetic theranostics
Scientific Reports (2024)
-
Imaging 3D chemistry at 1 nm resolution with fused multi-modal electron tomography
Nature Communications (2024)
-
Rapid, high-yield aqueous synthesis of ultrafine magnetite nanoparticles from Fe(III) precursor at room temperature
Journal of Materials Science (2024)
-
Crystallization of binary nanocrystal superlattices and the relevance of short-range attraction
Nature Synthesis (2023)
-
Photothermally heated colloidal synthesis of nanoparticles driven by silica-encapsulated plasmonic heat sources
Nature Communications (2023)