Unusual structural transformation and luminescence response of magic-size silver(i) chalcogenide clusters via ligand-exchange. Issue 98 (24th November 2021) - Wu, Wei-Hong
Abstract : Herein, the growth of magic-size silver(i ) chalcogenide clusters from Ag32 S3 to Ag45 S6 is described, providing a ligand-exchange approach to access the size and luminescence of semiconductor silver(i ) clusters. Abstract : Structural transformations of nanoclusters provide a platform to tune their properties and understand the fundamental science due to their intimate structure–property correlation. Here, we present an alkynyl ligand-exchange induced growth of atomically precise silver(i ) clusters, which are particularly of interest because of their luminescence response at room temperature. SCXRD and UV-vis map out the growth steps of the cluster from [Ag32 S3 (CCBu t )23 ] 3+ featuring a pseudo- D 3h concave Ag32 S3 to [Ag45 S6 (CCPhBr)32 ] + with a pseudo- O h core–shell Ag9 S6 @Ag24 @Ag12, which is driven by a thermodynamic route under the disruption of ligands. To our knowledge, the findings in this work establish the first example of ligand-exchange as a versatile tool for tuning the size and luminescence of semiconductor silver(i ) clusters.