Carving growing nanocrystals: coupling seed-mediated growth with oxidative etching

This work presents multiple experimental evidences coherently showing that the versatile structural evolution of Au nanocrystals during seed-mediated growth under the guidance of foreign metal ions and halide-containing surfactants is essentially dictated by the dynamic interplay between oxidative etching and nanocrystal growth. Coupling nanocrystal growth with oxidative etching under kinetically controlled conditions enables the in situ surface carving of the growing nanocrystals, through which the surface topography of shape-controlled nanocrystals can be deliberately tailored on the nanometer length-scale.