Oriented-assembly of hollow FePt nanochains with tunable catalytic and magnetic properties.

Hollow nanoparticles with large surface areas exhibit a lot of advantages for applications such as catalysis and energy storage. Furthermore, their performance can be manipulated by their deliberate assemblies. Dispersive hollow FePt nanospheres have been assembled into one-dimensional hollow FePt nanochains under the magnetic fields at room temperature. Based on the activation of galvanic replacement at different reaction stages, the size of hollow FePt nanochains can be deliberately manipulated varying from 20 nm to 300 nm, together with the length changing from 200 nm to 10 μm. The competition between movement of paramagnetic Fe(3+) ions and shape recovering due to thermal fluctuations plays a critical effect on the structure of contact area between hollow nanospheres, leading to perforative structures. Compared with commercial Pt/C, well aligned hollow FePt nanochains show greatly enhanced catalytic activities in the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) due to more favorable mass flow. Magnetic measurements indicate that the magnetic properties including Curie temperature and saturation magnetization can be tuned by the control of the size and shape of hollow nanochains.