Morphology and structure controlled synthesis of ruthenium nanoparticles in oleylamine.

Mastery over the morphology/structure of nanoparticles enables control of their properties and enhancement of their usefulness for a given application. Herein, we report a systematic study on the synthesis of ruthenium nanoparticles in oleylamine, including the tuning of their morphology/shape by temperature or by seed-mediated growth. A phase-transfer based strategy for the fabrication of the Ru nanoparticles with hollow interiors has also been demonstrated in this work, which involves the phase transfer of the core-shell Ag-Ru nanoparticles prepared in oleylamine from organic solvent to aqueous phase and the subsequent removal of Ag cores from the core-shell nanoparticles by reacting with NaCl. This approach enables the synthesis of hollow structured Ru nanoparticles in a single aqueous phase, and avoids the use of expensive chemical reagents. Both of them are favorable for the large-scale synthesis of Ru nanoparticles with hollow interiors.