Chemical Control over the Formation and Reactivity of High Entropy Nanoparticles

With the support of the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry Program in the Division of Chemistry, Professor Schaak of Penn State University will establish new ways of making nanoparticles that contain five or more metallic elements. Nanoparticles with such complex compositions are anticipated to have unique properties compared to those containing a smaller number of metals.

These properties could be useful for applications that include catalysis and electronics. In this research project, Prof. Schaak and his research group aim to identity and understand how various combinations of chemical reagents interact and react to form compositionally complex nanoparticles.

Using the knowledge gained from these studies, they will learn how to control nanoparticle composition, structure, shape, and size, which are features that can influence properties. Schaak and his group will also develop a series of nanochemistry-focused tutorials on compositionally complex nanoparticles and introduce automated synthesis and AI-driven exploration of chemical complexity into undergraduate classes.

The complex compositions of high entropy materials, which incorporate five or more principal elements, can give rise to synergistic chemical interactions that modify electronic structure and reactivity. Nanoparticles of these materials are especially promising for catalysis, given their high surface areas, but synthesizing them can be challenging because of the different reactivities and reaction rates of the various reagents.

Schaak and his group will dynamically modulate reagent delivery protocols to balance reactivities and to gain mechanistic insights into how high entropy nanoparticles form. They will also investigate the role of chemical synergy in high entropy nanoparticle formation and leverage chemical reactivity to synthesize new high entropy nanoparticles with anticipated synergistic properties.

This knowledge is expected to enable simultaneous synthetic control over composition, structure, shape, and size for a broad range of high entropy nanoparticle systems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.