Chemical strategy for tuning the surface microstructures of particles

Particles with tailored surface microstructures exhibit unique structure-dependent phenomena and subsequent utilization of them for the practical applications are of significant interest. In this work, we have developed some potential chemical strategies to tune the surface microstructures of functional materials, such as hollow ZnO microspheres, semiconductor films or arrays, LiNbO3 spheres, and cubic phase Cu2O particles. We describe their surface microstructure-guiding processes and illustrate the detailed key factors controlling their growth by examining various reaction parameters. The proposed surface structure-guiding mechanisms are presented and the important pioneering studies on the rational design and fabrication of particles with tunable surface microstructures are discussed. Current results demonstrate that our suggested chemical strategies for tuning surface microstructures of particles can be used as a versatile and effective route to the controllable synthesis of other inorganic functional materials.