Recently, the research result of the team led by Professor Sun Litao of School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Electrically driven cation exchange for in situ fabrication of individual nanostructures was published in Nature Communications 8, 14889(2017), with Southeast University as the first complete unit. SEU, PhD student Zhang Qiubo and young teacher Yin Kuibo were co-first author. Professor Sun Litao and Professor Zheng Haimei of University of California Berkeley, were co-corresponding author.
Cation exchange is always used to synthesize nano-materials with more complex structure and compostion which are not easily obtained using direct synthesis techniques, and it has been recognized as a popular tool for the synthesis of heterogeneous nanostructures. However, the current cation exchange is difficult to control the synthesis of individual heterogeneous nanostructure. Therefore, it hinders the integrated processing and manufacturing of high precision nano devices in the future.
The research team first proposed an electrically driven CE process. By controlling the contact position of ion source, it is possible to selectively prepare and modify individual nanocrystals with complex structure (Fig.1) and precisely control CE process to synthesize heterogeneous nanocrystals in different degree (Fig.2). The team proved electrically driven CE process was an effective way to control the synthesis of heterogeneous nanomaterials. And it also provided a visual and direct basis for understanding the microscopic mechanism of heterogeneous structure during CE process, which made the process and preparation of materials and devices in nano-scale more clear, more accurate and more controllable.
This research is another important achievement in the series of work of Professor Sun’s team in the field of high precision nano-processing and characterization in recent years. The related results were published in Adv. Funct.Mater. (2016), DOI: 10. 1002/adfm. 201603897 (Impact Factor 15.23), Nano Energy 30,771 (2016) (Impact Factor 11.553), 2D Mater. 4, 011001 (2017) (Impact Factor 9.611) and other important academic journals. The research has been funded by the China Outstanding Youth Fund Project of the National Natural Science Foundation, and International Cooperation Key Projects and National Major Scientific Research Equipment Development Projects (11525415, 51420105003, 11327901, 61274114).
