ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a framework that defines how to understand and control material structure across length scales with inorganic nanoparticles. Three length scales, frequently discussed separately, are unified under the topic of hierarchical organization: atoms arranged into crystalline nanoparticles, ligands arranged on nanoparticle surfaces, and nanoparticles arranged into crystalline superlattices. Approaches to quantify nanoparticle structure can be broadly classified as ensemble techniques, which can evaluate the collective properties of a sample to provide population-level estimates of average structural parameters, or local techniques, which can directly probe the structure of individual nanoparticles. Because ensemble measurements cannot be deconvoluted without significant assumptions about structure and purity, but individual measurements can be built up into population-level statistics, the latter more quantitatively describes nanoparticle uniformity for heterogeneous populations. Few nanomaterial surfaces are bare, and in solution chemical species can adsorb, coordinate, or bond to a nanomaterial surface.
