Penta-twinned bipyramidal Au microcrystallites: Unraveling non-cubic phases and investigating phase transformations

Abstract

Materials with one of the dimensions in nanometer scale typically in the range of ~ 1- 100 nm are considered as nanomaterials. With reduction of size down to the nano regime, the properties of the materials change drastically. For example, instead of a continuous band, discrete bands are obtained in metals due to the non-overlapping of the bands. The gap between the discrete bands is considered as Kubo gap (). Depending on the gap, a metal can be nonmetal/insulator at nanoscale (see Figure I.1) [1].