Francis Zamborini
University of Louisville, KY·Chemistry
Metal particles containing fewer than 200 atoms, called nanoclusters, behave very differently from bulk metal. Their properties can change with every atom added or swapped.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
nanoclusters
metal nanoparticles
alloy nanoparticles
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Electrodeposit atomically precise metal nanoclusters of controlled size on electrodes, using phosphine and phosphonium stabilizing ligands and tuning nucleation density and the stabilizer-to-metal-ion ratio.
- Make alloy nanoclusters by adding a second metal through antigalvanic replacement reactions, and measure cluster size, coverage and composition using electrochemistry instead of costly microscopy or mass spectrometry.
- Develop a hydrogel scanning probe tip that confines electrodeposition to a nanoscale gel, to pattern nanoclusters and nanoparticles on electrodes, and study how electrochemistry behaves within the gel.
More about the research
That makes them promising catalysts, which speed up chemical reactions, but most batches contain clusters of many different sizes. They are also usually made in solution, purified, moved onto a surface, and analyzed with costly instruments such as electron microscopes and mass spectrometers. This project proposes to grow atomically precise nanoclusters (APNCs), clusters with exactly the same number of atoms, directly on a conductive electrode, and to analyze them with simple electrochemistry.
Why it matters
Uniform metal nanoclusters could serve as tunable catalysts for chemical industry reactions and for renewable energy devices such as batteries, fuel cells, electrolyzers and solar cells. Making them directly on electrodes and characterizing them with simple, low-cost electrochemistry could make these materials easier to study and use. Patterned nanostructures may also find use in chemical sensing.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Chenjie Zeng
University of Florida, FL·Chemistry
Control the surface structures of atomically precise II-VI semiconductor nanoclusters by tailoring the metal-ligand complexes used in cation exchange, the reaction that swaps metal ions inside an intact cluster framework.
Kenneth Knappenberger
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Chemistry
Test whether the lifetimes of excited electronic states in atomically precise metal nanoclusters can control how their acoustic modes (whole-particle vibrations) are excited, using coherent multidimensional laser spectroscopy and theory.
Kevin Shaughnessy
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN·Chemistry
Systematically study metal-catalyzed functionalization of halo-closo-borates, boron cage anions carrying a halogen handle, to establish how catalyst structure governs reactivity with these electron-rich anionic clusters.
The school
University of Louisville: 15 labs on PI Pages, $225M a year on research, 159 research doctorates a year.
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