Pengcheng Chen

By combining scanning probe lithography with nanoreactor-mediated synthesis strategies, Pengcheng Chen established a highly versatile and precise method for synthesizing polyelemental nanoparticles, enabling high-throughput fabrication and study of nanomaterials libraries​.

Utilizing scanning probe lithography, Pengcheng created polymer nanoreactor droplets containing metal ions. The spatial confinement of the nanoreactors facilitated the formation of polyelemental nanoparticles at very small scales. Using a five-element system of gold, silver, copper, cobalt, and nickel as a model, he successfully synthesized nanoparticles in all possible combinations of these five metals. This marks the first international achievement in database-style fabrication and combinatorial study of polyelemental nanoparticles, expanding the understanding of the thermodynamic behavior of multielement systems at the nanoscale.

Leveraging this technology, Pengcheng created a non-centrosymmetric heterojunction nanoparticle database encompassing seven elements. Through systematic exploration of the seven-element system combined with theoretical modeling, he successfully constructed one to six different thermodynamically stable phase boundaries within a single particle, providing theoretical guidance for the creation of nanomaterials with complex heterostructures​.

This technology provides an ideal platform for the study of nanomaterials genomics and has the potential to become a new generation of transformative technology for the high-throughput screening of functional nanomaterials.