Effect of electron irradiation on nanogroove-networked single-crystalline and dendritic polycrystalline platinum nanosheets prepared from lyotropic surfactant liquid-crystal templates

Abstract

Using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) electron irradiation effects were studied for nanogroove-network structured single-crystalline and dendritic polycrystalline Pt nanosheets 50–60 nm in size. These two nanosheets with nearly the same average groove-width or dendritic spacing of 1.3–1.4 nm were prepared from the mixed and single surfactant liquid crystalline templates, respectively. On exposure to electron beam for 20 min at the acceleration voltage of 200 kV, the nanogrooved nanosheets were morphologically little affected, but the dendritic ones were transformed into less branched polycrystalline structures with spacings distributed around ∼1.7 nm. The shape transformation of the latter occurred by the combined mechanism of segmental migration and atomic diffusion. These observations indicate that the nanogrooved Pt nanosheets are highly stabilized by the grooved but crystallographically continuous Pt framework, leading to their extremely high thermo-resistance, in marked contrast to the polycrystalline dendritic structures constructed of crystallographically discontinuous linkages of nanoblocks.