Tonnam Balankura edited untitled.tex  almost 9 years ago

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Away from equilibrium, NC shape is governed by the kinetics of inter- and intrafacet atom diffusion, as well as by the kinetics of deposition to various facets, and the resulting shapes at nonequilibrium growth conditions  are normally expected to be  different from the thermodynamic shapes. When NCs grow beyond a certain size, the relative atom deposition rate to various facets should be the main factor in determining NC shape. In this regime, the kinetic Wulff construction can be used to predict the shape evolution of faceted crystal growth as described in the supporting information. Based on a 3-dimensional shape evolution calculation, we correlate the relative flux of deposition to \{111\} and \{100\} facets $\frac{F_{111}}{F_{100}}$ and the resulting kinetic Wulff shape in the reversible octahedron-to-cube transformation \cite{Zhang_2006}. Figure 1 shows the shape progression was a function of the relative atom flux $\frac{F_{111}}{F_{100}}$. When the relative flux to \{100\} facets is more than twice of the flux to \{111\} facets, we expect to observe octahedra. As $F_{111}$ increases relative to $F_{100}$, we observe a shape progression to cubo-octahedra to truncated cubes and eventually to cubes for $\frac{F_{111}}{F_{100}} >= \sqrt{3}$. In this work, we choose the seed-mediated Ag polyol synthesis with PVP as the model and use large scale MD simulations to quantify $F_{100}$ and $F_{111}$ and construct kinetic Wulff shape plot to probe the cube-to-octahedron transformation. Our study reveals the mechanism by which SDAs impart shape selectivity.