Growth and Form of Nanostructures

The growth of crystals from the solution phase involves chance encounters between monomers and is described by the classical theory of nucleation. Nucleation and growth processes play a key role in controlling the morphology, microstructure and chemistry and consequently every conceivable property in advanced functional materials. I will present some of our work on mechanistic understanding of nucleation, growth and morphology of nanocrystals and discuss specific issues of symmetry breaking during shape evolution and selective heterogeneous nucleation. Specific examples include 1-D and 2-D nanostructures and hybrids. I will illustrate some general principles that we have been able to extract as a result of research over the past few years and also some thoughts on future directions.