Simple and fast method for determination of preferred crystallographic orientation of nanoparticles: A study on ZnS/kaolinite nanocomposite

journal article in Web of Science

English

Crystallographic orientation of nanoparticles anchored on surface of solid crystalline matrix plays an important role in the resulting activity (e.g. the catalytic activity) of such structured nanocomposites. Possibility to predict the crystallographic orientation can thus be advantageous in many areas of materials science. This study presents a simple method of such prediction by determining the structure compatibility of two crystal structures based on the average number of pairs of overlapping atoms calculated from the mutual rotation of two (hkl) planes: one plane belonging to the nanoparticle crystal structure, the second one belonging to the matrix crystal structure. In this work, the structure compatibility of photocatalytic ZnS nanoparticles and tetrahedral kaolinite surface was studied. Results were compared with molecular simulations and with the high-resolution transmission electron microscopy analysis performed on a sample of the real ZnS/kaolinite nanocomposite. All three approaches led to identical result: the same preferred crystallographic orientation of ZnS on the tetrahedral surface of kaolinite was found. The method of determining structure compatibility is the fastest of the three approaches used, and thus appears to be very suitable for the purpose of predicting the preferred crystallographic orientation.

ZnS; Kaolinite; Structure compatibility; Molecular modeling; HRTEM

OLŠOVSKÁ, E.; TOKARSKÝ, J.; MICHALIČKA, J.; MAMULOVÁ KUTLÁKOVÁ, K.

1. 4. 2021

ELSEVIER

AMSTERDAM

0169-4332

Applied Surface Science

544

1

Kingdom of the Netherlands

148966-1

148966-9

9

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169433221000428?via%3Dihub