Kinetically Probing Site-Specific Heterogeneous Nucleation and Hierarchical Growth of Nanobranches

Elementary steps in heterogeneous nucleation and hierarchical nanogrowth processes, which are important in design and development of viable bottom-up nanofabrications, have been seldom exploited. We here combine new kinetic data from series of hierarchical nanosyntheses, including activation enthalpy and entropy, with FTIR results to tackle (i) elementary steps in both the nucleation and the growth of ZnO nanobranches and (ii) roles of heterogeneous nucleation directing agent and mild heating in the steps. Thus-enriched understanding of the interfacial kinetics may help solve some long-standing problems such as the lattice mismatch in the hierarchical bottom-up assembly of nanodevices from nanostructured building blocks in solution.