Effective octadecylamine system for nanocrystal synthesis.

New chemical reactions and synthetic systems are of key importance for materials fabrication. In this work, we reported a facile and effective octadecylamine (ODA) synthetic system for various nanocrystals including metals, mixed metal oxides, metal/metal oxide heterostructured nanocrystals, intermetallics, and alloys. We found that the products were mainly determined by metal ions used in our synthetic system: noble metal ions led to the formation of metals; two kinds of non-noble metal ions led to the formation of mixed metal oxides; silver ions and non-noble metal ions led to the formation of metal/metal oxide heterostructured nanocrystals; non-noble metal ions and noble metal (excluding Ag) ions led to the formation of intermetallics and alloys. The difference was attributed to different ability to attract electrons from ODA solvent among these metal ions. This effective system provides a general strategy for various nanocrystals which would find potential applications in many significant fields.