Prof. Li Hui's Research Group Make Advances in Revealing the Special Oxidation Mechanism of Metallic Nanoparticles-Shandong University

Recently, Prof. Li Hui's research group at the School of Materials Science and Engineering of Shandong University has made significant progress in the research on the oxidation mechanism of metallic nanoparticles. The research article entitled "Atomistic Origin of the Complex Morphological Evolution of Aluminum Nanoparticles during Oxidation: A Chain-like Oxide Nucleation and Growth Mechanism" is published onACS Nano(IF= 13.709), one ofthe prestigious international journals in the field of materials science. The first author of this article is Zhang Xingfan, a postgraduate student from the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Prof. Li Hui and Prof. Jiang Yanyan are the co-corresponding authors, and Shandong University is the independent corresponding unit.

Metallic nanoparticles usually show different oxidation mechanisms from bulk metals because of their size-related surface effects. However, the underlying mechanism of the oxidation of metallic nanoparticles is poorly understood. In this work, Prof. Hui Li's team revealed the chain-like nucleation and growth mechanism of oxides on aluminum nanoparticles for the first time.The results show that the oxidation reaction at the nanoscale has remarkable selectivity on the surface of aluminum nanoparticles. The oxides show preference in nucleating at the surface sites which have lower atomic coordination numbers and higher activity. When the oxygen content and temperature are relatively low, the chain-like oxide nuclei would stay on the nanoparticle surface and continue growing into a metal/oxide core-shell structure. In the conditions of higher oxygen content or temperature, the oxides wouldextend outward from the surface to form longer oxide chains, or even detach from the ANP to generate independent oxide clusters, which is caused by the combined effect of the atomic kinetic energy and internal stress.This work reveals the special mode of the oxidation of metallic nanoparticles, which could provide theoretical guidance for the oxidation and corrosion of low-dimensional materials.

Prof. Li Hui's research group have been committed to the design and development of functional nanomaterials, which involves the wettability of the materials, electronic transport properties of nanodevices, structures and phase transitions of liquid metals, self-assembly of nanomaterials, and oxidation and corrosion of metals.In recent years, his team has published a series of articles on prestigious international journals, such as J. Am. Chem. Soc., Adv. Mater., ACS Nano, NPG Asia Mater. and the like, which have earned recognitions from foreign counterparts. This work is supported by the Key Laboratory for Liquid−Solid Structural Evolution and Processing of Materials, Ministry of Education, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Special Funding in the Project of the Taishan Scholar Construction Engineering, and Qilu Young Scholar Program of Shandong University.