Recently, a team of researchers from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) consecutively removed the innermost atom and the outermost electron of a gold nanoparticle—without disturbing its overall structure. This precise manipulation allowed them to probe how the magnetic spin of the material influences its catalytic activity.

The work, led by Prof. Wu Zhikun in collaboration with Prof. Yang from the Institute of Process Engineering, CAS and Prof. Tang from Chongqing University, was published in Science Advances.

Gold nanoclusters—tiny particles composed of from a few to hundreds of gold atoms —are ideal models for studying how atomic structure affects material properties. But tuning the structure of such clusters atom by atom, especially when they’re relatively large and complex, has long been a major challenge.