Billions of 'nanoreactors' inform materials design
Post# of 22454
ByAnne Ju
Provided/Hanrath group
A schematic of lead selenide nanocrystals enclosed in iron oxide boxes.
Imagine building a chemical reactor small enough to study nanoparticles a billionth of a meter across. A billion times smaller
schematic of lead selenide nanocrystals
than a raindrop is the volume of an E. coli cell. And another million times smaller would be a reactor small enough to study isolated nanoparticles. Add to that the challenge of making not just one of these tiny reactors, but billions of them, all identical in size and shape. Researchers at Cornell have done just that.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/11/b...als-design
The team arranged six lead selenide crystals within a framework of iron oxide (rust) spheres. They studied how the quantum dots within the nanoscale “rusty cage” interact, using X-rays at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS).