Facile synthesis of platinum octahedra and cubes through the manipulation of reduction kinetics

Control over the shape of platinum nanocrystals has received great interests owing to their correlations with structure sensitive catalytic reactions such as CO/HC oxidation, NO_x reduction, H₂ oxidation, O₂ reduction, and petroleum reforming. Pt octahedra and cubes are the well-known model catalysts for the low-index {1 1 1} and {1 0 0} faceted nanocrystals, respectively. In this work, a facile synthesis of Pt octahedra and cubes was conducted by manipulating the reduction kinetics. The reduction kinetics for the Pt precursor was altered by adjusting the volume ratio of oleylamine (OAm) and oleic acid (OAc) as the co-stabilizers and the coordination ligands in the reaction mixture. The morphologies of well-controlled Pt octahedra and cubes were observed by typical transmission electron microscopy.