Tuning the Electronic Properties of Mesocrystals

Abstract

Colloidal crystals are arguably one of the most promising candidates when it comes to the fabrication of nanostructured metamaterials. Especially mesocrystals show exciting new properties that emerge from their inherent directional oriented assembly. With this work, the electrical conductivity of well-defined micrometer-sized platinum nanocube-based mesocrystals is demonstrated and tuned through the variation of different capping agents. Herein, a method is presented to reproducibly quantify the intrinsic resistance of individual mesocrystals through electrical nanoprobing and focused ion beam deposition contacting. A thermally activated tunneling mechanism is identified as the main effect for electron propagation. In addition, the mesocrystals are altered through organically linking and mineral bridging the individual nanoparticles. This results in an increase in mesocrystal rigidity and, more importantly, conductivity by seven orders of magnitude while retaining shape, structure, and composition. In addition, these observations are transferred onto multicomponent superstructures in the form of binary mesocrystals. There, it is demonstrated that the electrical properties could be tuned through the ratio of nanoparticles incorporated into a mesocrystalline host system while simultaneously maintaining potential catalytic or superparamagnetic features of the guest particles.