Controlled growth of a metal–organic framework on gold nanoparticles

The growth of a zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-8) on Au nanoparticles (NPs) is controlled through tuning of the Au NP surface structure using competitive ligands, which results in concentric core–shell, eccentric core–shell or Janus nano-hybrids. With these three types of controlled structures, we demonstrated the influence of the ZIF-8 shell on the catalytic performance of Au NPs.