Electron microscopy gives new insight into metal nanoparticle oxidation

The research led by York University and reported in Nature Materials, shows that oxidation of metals proceeds much more rapidly in nanoparticles than at the macroscopic scale. This is due to the large amount of strain introduced in the nanoparticles due to their size.

According to York University, improving the understanding of metallic nanoparticles – particularly those of iron and silver - is of key importance to scientists because of their many potential applications.

Iron and iron oxide nanoparticles are considered important in fields ranging from clean fuel technologies, high density data storage and catalysis, to water treatment, soil remediation, targeted drug delivery and cancer therapy.

The research team, which included scientists from Leicester University, Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, used the resolution attainable with aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy to study the oxidisation of cuboid iron nanoparticles and performed strain analysis at the atomic level.