Surface faceting and compositional evolution of Pd@Au core–shell nanocrystals during in situ annealing

Bimetallic core–shell nanoparticles have received considerable attention for their unique optical, magnetic and catalytic properties. However, these properties will be dramatically modified under ambient conditions by their structure and/or composition change. Thus, it is of primary importance to study the complex transformation pathway of core–shell nanoparticles at an elevated temperature. In this work, by using an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray mapping system, the complete transformation process from a well-designed Pd@Au core–shell nanoparticle to a uniform alloy particle was visualized. It is revealed that this transformation process went through three steps, i.e., surface refacetting, particle resphering and complete alloying. Combining with a developed atomic kinetic Monte Carlo simulation, we found that surface energy is the driving force for shape variation, and the different atomic activation barriers of surface diffusion and bulk migration result in the multistep transformation pathway. Our results offered important information for understanding the structure evolution of bimetallic core–shell nanoparticles, which is beneficial for the rational design of nanoparticles with kinetic stability.