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The effect of elastic strain on catalytic activity of platinum (Pt) towards oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is investigated through de-alloyed Pt-Cu thin films; stress evolution in the de-alloyed layer and the mass of the Cu removed are measured in real-time during electrochemical de-alloying of (111)-textured thin-film PtCu (1:1, atom %) electrodes. In situ stress measurements are made using the cantilever-deflection method and nano-gravimetric measurements are made using an electrochemical quartz crystal nanobalance. Upon de-alloying via successive voltammetric sweeps between -0.05 and 1.15 V vs. standard hydrogen electrode, compressive stress develops in the de-alloyed Pt layer at the surface of thin-film PtCu electrodes. The de-alloyed films also exhibit enhanced catalytic activity towards ORR compared to polycrystalline Pt. In situ nanogravimetric measurements reveal that the mass of de-alloyed Cu is approximately 210 +/- 46 ng/cm2, which corresponds to a de-alloyed layer thickness of 1.2 +/- 0.3 monolayers or 0.16 +/- 0.04 nm. The average biaxial stress in the de-alloyed layer is estimated to be 4.95 +/- 1.3 GPa, which corresponds to an elastic strain of 1.47 +/- 0.4%. In addition, density functional theory calculations have been carried out on biaxially strained Pt (111) surface to characterize the effect of strain on its ORR activity; the predicted shift in the limiting potentials due to elastic strain is found to be in good agreement with the experimental shift in the cyclic voltammograms for the dealloyed PtCu thin film electrodes., Comment: 30 pages, 15 figures

We report exchange bias (EB) effect in the Au-Fe3O4 composite nanoparticle system, where one or more Fe3O4 nanoparticles are attached to an Au seed particle forming dimer and cluster morphologies, with the clusters showing much stronger EB in comparison with the dimers. The EB effect develops due to the presence of stress in the Au-Fe3O4 interface which leads to the generation of highly disordered, anisotropic surface spins in the Fe3O4 particle. The EB effect is lost with the removal of the interfacial stress. Our atomistic Monte-Carlo studies are in excellent agreement with the experimental results. These results show a new path towards tuning EB in nanostructures, namely controllably creating interfacial stress, and open up the possibility of tuning the anisotropic properties of biocompatible nanoparticles via a controllable exchange coupling mechanism., Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Nanotechnology

We report the magnetotransport properties of self-assembled Co@CoO nanoparticle arrays at temperatures below 100 K. Resistance shows thermally activated behavior that can be fitted by the general expression of R exp{(T/T0)^v}. Efros-Shklovskii variable range hopping (v=1/2) and simple activation (hard gap, v=1) dominate the high and low temperature region, respectively, with a strongly temperature-dependent transition regime in between. A giant positive magnetoresistance of >1,400% is observed at 10K, which decreases with increasing temperature. The positive MR and most of its features can be explained by the Zeeman splitting of the localized states that suppresses the spin dependent hopping paths in the presence of on-site Coulomb repulsion.

A direct probe of superparamagnetism was used to determine the complete anisotropy energy distribution of Co nanoparticle films. The films were composed of self-assembled lattices of uniform Co nanoparticles 3 nm or 5 nm in diameter, and a variable temperature scanning-SQUID microscope was used to measure temperature-induced spontaneous magnetic noise in the samples. Accurate measurements of anisotropy energy distributions of small volume samples will be critical to magnetic optimization of nanoparticle devices and media., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to Physical Review Letters