Positively Charged Additives Facilitate Incorporation in Inorganic Single Crystals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that positively charged additives can be effectively incorporated into inorganic single crystals, enabling the creation of nanocomposites with enhanced functional properties such as fluorescence and SERS, surpassing traditional anionic additives.

Contribution

It introduces cationic additives as a superior alternative for nanocomposite synthesis in inorganic crystals, achieving high incorporation levels and functional enhancements.

Findings

Up to 70 wt% incorporation of cationic additives achieved.

Cationic additives outperform acidic counterparts in various crystal systems.

Nanocomposites exhibit plasmon coupling, fluorescence, and SERS properties.

Abstract

Incorporation of guest additives within inorganic single crystals offers a unique strategy for creating nanocomposites with tailored properties. While anionic additives have been widely used to control the properties of crystals, their effective incorporation remains a key challenge. Here, we show that cationic additives are an excellent alterative for the synthesis of nanocomposites, where they are shown to deliver exceptional levels of incorporation of up to 70 wt% of positively charged amino acids, polymer particles, gold nanoparticles, and silver nanoclusters within inorganic single crystals. This high additive loading endows the nanocomposites with new functional properties including plasmon coupling, bright fluorescence, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). Cationic additives are also shown to outperform their acidic counterparts, where they are highly active in a wider range of crystal systems, owing to their outstanding colloidal stability in the crystallization media and strong affinity for the crystal surfaces. This work demonstrates that although often overlooked, cationic additives can make valuable crystallization additives to create composite materials with tailored composition-structure-property relationships. This versatile and straightforward approach advances the field of single-crystal composites and provides exciting prospects for the design and fabrication of new hybrid materials with tunable functional properties.