Beyond Snowflakes: Heterogeneity in Nanomaterials

Abstract

Tolstoy wrote in his famous Anna Karenina the ubiquity of heterogeneity at that time associated with bad fortune: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It is somewhat consistent with the immediate prospective of heterogeneity in materials; disordered defects in a sea of highly ordered crystalline metals can serve as the heel of Achilles for the onset of mechanical failure; byproducts in a monodisperse nanoparticle synthesis are what chemists strive to remove. This Viewpoint communicates our vision on opportunities in reversing this impression, to acknowledge, to cope with, and to utilize the heterogeneity of nanomaterials.