This thesis focuses on identifying structure-property-performance relationships in supported nanoparticle catalysts, where an active catalyst material is supported on a high surface area substrate. Identifying these relationships in supported nanoparticle catalysts can be quite challenging, as the complex structure of these catalysts results in numerous potential sources for changes to...
Self-assembly of colloidal particles at the nano- and microscale has been a powerful tool for producing structures with emergent properties in applications ranging from electro-mechanical systems to photonics and biomedical devices. Great success has been achieved in experiments, where a variety of exotic phases have been discovered and even reconfigurable...
The Controlled, Site-Isolated Synthesis of Polyelemental Nanostructures in Polymer Nanoreactors Pengcheng Chen Polyelemental nanoparticles are an attractive class of materials due to their potential applications, which span the fields of catalysis, plasmonics, electronics, magnetics, targeted drug delivery, and bio-imaging. However, conventional synthetic methods for such structures are limited, especially when...
Colloidal crystal engineering with DNA offers new opportunities for materials scientists to build and program the structures of superlattices beyond what can be accomplished in Nature with atomic crystal lattices. Thus far, such materials primarily have been studied for their optical properties due to the insulating nature of the DNA...