The completion of the platonic atomic polyhedra: The dodecahedron

The shape of nanoparticles is strongly dependent on the preparation methods. When metallic nanoparticles are synthesized, their three-dimensional (3D) shape or structures results in 2D projections in the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image corresponding to different shapes such as squares, triangles, hexagons, quasi-circles, and pentagons. When bimetallic nanoparticles are synthesized, the frequency of the icosahedral particle increases, particularly for the smallest sizes. The result shows that in the very small size range of both mono- and bimetallic nanoparticles, the complete sequence of structures formed such as, atoms clusters, Platonic solids, Archimedean solids, defected structures, and bulk structures.