How Do Self-Ordered Silver Nanocrystals Influence Their Growth into Triangular Single Crystals?

Thin triangular silver single crystals are obtained by annealing self-ordered 5 nm silver nanocrystals coated with decanethiol at 50 °C and deposited on highly oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG). With the annealing time, the nanocrystals coalesce progressively in the 2D hexagonal arrays and 3D face-centered cubic (fcc) superlattices. By controlling the ordering degree of the nanocrystal assemblies, we observe that the size of the ordered domains tunes the final size of the triangles.