New Insight into Electrochemical Nucleation and Growth of Metal Nanoparticles through Multiscale Approach

Abstract

Nowadays, supporting metal nanoparticles have attracted much interest due to their fascinating physio-chemical properties and potential application in fuel cells, sensors, catalysis, solar to fuel devices and among others. One of the interesting issues from engaging physiochemical properties of supporting nanoparticles is to understand their nucleation and growth mechanism in order to get a good control of their structural and morphological parameters. Although studied for decades, however, the full details are still out of reach [1]. In this presentation, we will first review the classical theory of nucleation and growth and secondly present our recent finding and theoretical development on the growth of an isolated metal nanoparticle using a combined experimental (linear sweep voltammetry, chronoamperommetry and FESEM) and multiscale modelling approach [2-5]. In this presentation we focused on the modelling approach. The use of such a multiscale framework allows studying nanoscale electrochemical deposition as a whole, without the need to assume a dominant growth mechanism such as diffusion or kinetic control [2-5]. The simulation results reveal that the existing theory of nucleation and growth is only valid for some specific conditions. Some of the findings will be discussed in this presentation.