Jixiang Fang

Highly sensitive, uniform, and reproducible surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy from hollow Au-Ag alloy nanourchins.

A hierarchical nanoparticle strategy to simultaneously gain super Raman signal amplification, high uniformity, and reproducibility is presented. Using hollow Au-Ag alloy nanourchins, an ultrahigh sensitivity, e.g., down to 1 fM concentrations for DEHP molecule is obtained. A small standard deviation of <10% is achieved by simply dropping and evaporating sub-100 nm nanourchins onto a substrate.

Nanoparticle-aggregated 3D monocrystalline gold dendritic nanostructures

In this paper, through a simple and fast electroless metal deposition route, gold dendritic nanostructures are synthesized in aqueous conditions. The gold dendrites with a threefold symmetric characteristic were built up of numerous nanoparticles roughly 5–10 nm in size. The aggregated nanoparticles spontaneously experience a self-assembly process along crystallographic orientations and finally form a monocrystalline dendrite. An oriented attachment mechanism can be used to explain the nanoparticle-aggregated self-assembly process.

Electrochemical synthesis of leaf-like CuO mesocrystals and their lithium storage properties

We have developed an electrochemical approach for the synthesis of leaf-like CuO mesocrystals. The oriented attachment mechanism is responsible for the formation of CuO mesocrystals. As anode materials for lithium ion batteries, the high reversible capacity and enhanced cycle performance were demonstrated.

Atomic structure and structural stability of Sc75Fe25 nanoglasses.

Nanoglasses are solids consisting of nanometer-sized glassy regions connected by interfaces having a reduced density. We studied the structure of Sc(75)Fe(25) nanoglasses by electron microscopy, positron annihilation spectroscopy, and small-/wide-angle X-ray scattering. The positron annihilation spectroscopy measurements showed that the as-prepared nanoglasses consisted of 65 vol% glassy and 35 vol% interfacial regions. By applying temperature annealing to the nanoglasses and measuring in situ small-angle X-ray scattering, we observed that the width of the interfacial regions increased exponentially as a function of the annealing temperature. A quantitative fit to the small-angle X-ray scattering data using a Debye-Bueche random phase model gave a correlation length that is related to the sizes of the interfacial regions in the nanoglass. The correlation length was found to increase exponentially from 1.3 to 1.7 nm when the sample temperature was increased from 25 to 230 °C. Using simple approximations, we correlate this to an increase in the width of interfacial regions from 0.8 to 1.2 nm, while the volume fraction of interfacial regions increased from 31 to 44%. Using micro-compression measurements, we investigated the deformation behavior of ribbon glass and the corresponding nanoglass. While the nanoglass exhibited a remarkable plasticity even in the annealed state owing to the glass-glass interfaces, the corresponding ribbon glass was brittle. As this difference seems not limited to Sc(75)Fe(25) glasses, the reported result suggest that nanoglasses open the way to glasses with high ductility resulting from the nanometer sized microstructure.

Interface synthesis of gold mesocrystals with highly roughened surfaces for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Local electromagnetic enhancement excited from collective oscillations of free electrons on a highly roughened mental surface can induce greatly enhanced Raman scattering. Herein gold mesoparticles with various morphologies and highly roughened surfaces, including sea urchin-like, flower-like, star-like, meatball-like, and dendritic nanostructures are prepared using pentanol/water interface as a growth “bed”. The morphologies of the prepared gold mesoparticles are well controlled by varying the concentrations of additives such as gold ions, ascorbic acid (AA) and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). Due to the unique structures such as rough surface, high internal porosity as well as complex morphology, these as-prepared mesocrystals exhibit a remarkable performance in surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) compared with polyhedral mesoparticles.

Nanoparticle attachment on silver corrugated-wire nanoantenna for large increases of surface-enhanced Raman scattering.

Using three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation, we described a systematic investigation on the electric field enhancement of the silver corrugated nanowires. The enhancement factor (EF) of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) for corrugated nanowires can be markedly increased by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude as compared with the smooth nanowires. Moreover, the EF can be further increased with nanoparticle attachment on the corrugated Ag nanowires owing to the coupling between the discrete plasmon state of the nanoparticles and continuum plasmon states of the corrugated nanowire or the crossed corrugated nanowires. The surface plasmonic field distribution of Ag nanowires can be effectively controlled by the polarization of the incident light. Raman spectrum measurements show that the relatively dense corrugated nanowires exhibit a relatively high reproducibility and SERS enhancement attributed to the elimination of polarization-dependent SERS-anisotropic enhancement via the overlapping of randomly distributed Ag nanowires. Such nanostructures as potential nanoantennas offer a route to optimize plasmon coupling for designing miniaturization integration.

A route to increase the enhancement factor of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) via a high density Ag flower-like pattern

We explored a route to prepare a high enhancement factor of SERS substrate via a high density of Ag flowerlike pattern. The finite difference time domain (FDTD) calculations indicate that the Ag flowerlike pattern may demonstrate a high quality SERS property owing to the high density and abundant hot spot characteristic. Using an unusually high overpotential with electrodeposition system, the fractal flowerlike patterns and the high density nanoparticle arrays were experimental synthesized. The SERS measurement of above different Ag nanostructures verified the predications from the FDTD calculation.

Polyhedral silver mesocages for single particle surface-enhanced Raman scattering-based biosensor

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering-based signal detection and molecular identification faces the lack of reproducibility and reliability thus hampers its practical applications. Here, we demonstrate a facile particle mediated aggregation protocol to synthesize highly roughened mesosuperstructure--silver polyhedral mesocages. The individual silver octahedral mesocage, owing to highly-roughed surface topography, anisotropic growth as well as intraparticle effect, creates homogenously distributed multiple effective hot spots on the surface of single mesoparticle, hereby exhibits a high reproducibility and an unusual SERS enhancement, i.e., ∼ 10(8)-10(9) magnitude. As such, the current protocol opens avenues for the fabrication of structurally reproducible mesosuperstructure-based SERS sensors.

A new route for the synthesis of polyhedral gold mesocages and shape effect in single-particle surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

We have demonstrated a new strategy to synthesize Au mesocages using polyhedral Cu(2)O templates. The obtained polyhedral Au mesocages show a strong shape effect in highly sensitive single-particle surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (sp-SERS).

How a silver dendritic mesocrystal converts to a single crystal

In this paper, we demonstrate how a silver dendrite transforms from mesocrystal into single crystal and the stability for a dendritic silver mesocrystal within a Sn∕AgNO3 galvanic replacement reaction. Our findings provide the direct evidence and visible picture of the transformation from mesocrystal to single crystalline structure and further confirm the particle-mediated crystallization mechanism. At the initial stage of the transformation, there is a crystallographic fusion process, dominated by oriented attachment mechanism. Ostwald ripening also plays an important role in forming smooth surface and regular shape of the final nanocrystal.