Rational construction of a scalable heterostructured nanorod megalibrary

Heterostructured nanorod libraries The synthesis of nanostructures with well-defined interfaces between different materials can enable applications in areas such as catalysis and solar energy harvesting. Nanomaterials containing several different materials are usually synthesized through top-down approaches, such as surface growth or templating techniques, which usually produce small quantities of particles. Steimle et al. performed up to seven cation-exchange reactions (with ions such as Zn 2+ and Co 2+ ) on solution-synthesized copper sulfide nanorods. In principle, more than 65,000 different variations of materials and their interfaces can be made, depending on the order and extent of cation exchange. Science , this issue p. 418