The last two decades have witnessed the successful development of noble-metal nanocrystals with well-controlled properties for a variety of applications in catalysis, plasmonics, electronics, and biomedicine. Most of these nanocrystals are kinetically controlled products greatly deviated from the equilibrium state defined by thermodynamics. When subjected to elevated temperatures, their arrangements of atoms are expected to undergo various physical transformations, inducing changes to the shape, morphology (hollow vs solid), spatial distribution of elements (segregated vs alloyed/intermetallic), internal structure (twinned vs single-crystal), and crystal phase. In order to optimize the performance of these nanocrystals in various applications, there is a pressing need to understand and improve their thermal stability.

中文翻译：

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热活化后贵金属纳米晶体的物理转变

在过去的二十年中，见证了具有良好可控性能的贵金属纳米晶体的成功开发，可广泛应用于催化，等离子，电子和生物医学领域。这些纳米晶体大多数是动力学控制的产物，大大偏离了热力学定义的平衡状态。当经受高温时，它们的原子排列预计会发生各种物理转变，从而引起形状，形态（空心对固体），元素的空间分布（偏析对合金/金属间化合物），内部结构（孪生对单晶）的变化。晶体）和晶体相。为了在各种应用中优化这些纳米晶体的性能，迫切需要了解并改善其热稳定性。