Facile Synthesis of Cu Nanocrystals with Morphology Evolution from Transitional Truncated Octahedra to Octahedra

Growth of Cu polyhedral structures with well-defined and controllable shapes faced tremendous synthetic challenges in colloid nanocrystal synthesis in the past few decades. In this article, we report a facile approach for the synthesis of Cu nanocrystals with systematic morphological evolution. Transitional truncated octahedral, edge- and corner-truncated octahedral, all-corner-truncated octahedral, and octahedral structures were obtained in a solution-based reduction reaction by precise tuning reaction time. Four distinct morphologies of nanocrystals have been characterized by SEM technique. The optical properties of these various morphologies of nanocrystals were also investigated, and it indicates that the SPR band shifts red while the shape of nanoparticles evolves from transitional truncated octahedral to octahedral, whose resonant bands are transferred from 590 nm to 620 nm.