Polydisperse Gold Nanocrystals and Hard Sphere Diameters

A fundamental property of nanocrystals is its hard sphere diameter. In this talk, I will provide a critical discussion on how to compute the diameter, why it is important and in what situations determines the nearest neighbor distance through packing considerations. I will then classify polydisperse nanocrystals of the truncated octahedral family and show that it consists of 351 different types within the size range 1-5nm. I will compute the hard sphere diameter and show how it changes with system size for all these cases. Connections with experiments with 16% polydispersity in alkylthiolated gold nanocrystals, which show crystal fractionalization, will also be discussed.