Browsing by Author "Yang, HY"

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    Plasmonic twinned silver nanoparticles with molecular precision
    (Springer Nature, 2016-09-09) Yang, HY; Wang, Y; Chen, X; Zhao, XJ; Gu, L; Huang, HQ; Yan, JZ; Xu, CO; Li, G; Wu, JC; Edwards, AJ; Dittrich, B; Tang, ZC; Wang, DD; Lehtovaara, L; Häkkinen, H; Zheng, NF
    Determining the structures of nanoparticles at atomic resolution is vital to understand their structure–property correlations. Large metal nanoparticles with core diameter beyond 2 nm have, to date, eluded characterization by single-crystal X-ray analysis. Here we report the chemical syntheses and structures of two giant thiolated Ag nanoparticles containing 136 and 374 Ag atoms (that is, up to 3 nm core diameter). As the largest thiolated metal nanoparticles crystallographically determined so far, these Ag nanoparticles enter the truly metallic regime with the emergence of surface plasmon resonance. As miniatures of fivefold twinned nanostructures, these structures demonstrate a subtle distortion within fivefold twinned nanostructures of face-centred cubic metals. The Ag nanoparticles reported in this work serve as excellent models to understand the detailed structure distortion within twinned metal nanostructures and also how silver nanoparticles can span from the molecular to the metallic regime. © The Author(s) 2016, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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    Reconstructing Cu nanoparticle supported on vertical graphene surfaces via electrochemical treatment to tune the selectivity of CO2 reduction toward valuable products
    (ACS Publications, 2022-04-07) Ma, ZP; Tsounis, C; Toe, CY; Kumar, PV; Subhash, B; Xi, SB; Yang, HY; Zhou, SJ; Lin, ZH; Wu, KH; Wong, RJ; Thomsen, L; Bedford, NM; Ng, YH; Han, ZJ; Amal, R
    Reconstructing a catalyst with tunable properties is essential for achieving selective electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR). Here, a reduction–oxidation–reduction (ROR) electrochemical treatment is devised to advisedly reconstruct copper nanoparticles on vertical graphene. Undercoordinated sites and oxygen vacancies constructed on the Cu active sites during the ROR treatment enhance the CO2RR activity. Moreover, by varying the oxidation potential while maintaining the reduction potential during the ROR treatment, CO2RR selectivity can be tuned between *COOH- and *OCHO-derived products. Specifically, rich grain boundaries are formed on the ROR catalyst with a high oxidation potential (+1.2 VRHE), favoring the *COOH/*OCCO adsorption and leading C–C coupling to *COOH-derived products, while the catalyst undergoing ROR at a low oxidation potential (+0.8 VRHE) lacks grain boundaries, resulting in highly selective formate (*OCHO-derived) production. Our findings are evidenced by combined in situ and ex situ characterizations and theoretical calculations. © 2022 American Chemical Society