Single-crystalline and multiple-twinned gold nanoparticles: an atomistic perspective on structural and thermal stabilities

Morphologies of gold nanoparticles play an important role in determining their chemical and physical (catalytic, electronic, optical, etc.) properties. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of the morphological stability is of crucial importance to their applications. In this article, we employed atomistic simulations to systematically investigate the structural and thermal stabilities of gold particles with eight representative nanoshapes, including single-crystalline and multiple-twinned structures. Our investigation has revealed that the truncated octahedron and the octahedron possessed the best structural stability, while the tetrahedron and the icosahedron did the worst. Further analyses have discovered different thermal stabilities and diverse melting behaviors in these particles. Especially, an inhomogeneous melting of the icosahedron was disclosed, and the relevant mechanism was elucidated. This study provides significant insight not only into the experimental preparation of gold nanoparticles but also into the design of gold nanostructures with both high catalytic activity and excellent stability.