Nonepitaxial Growth of Hybrid Core-Shell Nanostructures with Large Lattice Mismatches

Perfect Mismatch Heteroepitaxy, or the overgrowth of one crystalline material onto a second crystalline material, is a key fabrication method for making thin films and nanoparticles. But if the lattice mismatch between the two materials is too large or messy, fractured interfaces result. Zhang et al. (p. 1634 ) describe a synthesis strategy to obtain spherical nanoparticles with a core-shell architecture that does not depend on heteroepitaxy. Silver was deposited and converted to various semiconductors through a series of chemical transformations to yield structurally perfect single-crystal semiconductor shells on a gold core, despite mismatches approaching 50%.