This Account focuses on the recent development of interfacemediated growth of monodispersed nanostructures in our laboratory. By rationally tuning the chemical reactions at various gas–liquid, solid–solid, liquid–liquid, and liquid–solid–solution interfaces, we could readily synthesize nanostructures such as hollow microspheres, core–shell nanoparticles, and monodispersed nanocrystals. These advances in interface-mediated synthesis could lead to progress in the development of nanocrystal crystallography and encourage some more unique and exciting research and applications to nanoscience and nanotechnology.

A family of layered-lanthanum crystalline NWs with hierarchical pores was synthesized via a facile hydrothermal route. The diameter of the pores ranged from 2 to 50 nm, covering both the micropore and the mesopore scale. Luminescence was introduced by doping nanowires with Eu3+ ion. By combining the merits of hierarchical porous nanowires and layered hydroxides, these as-synthesized products have shown a unique bioengineering application of capturing and releasing short DNA fragments rapidly in dilute solution, and environmental engineering applications due to their remarkable capability to remove organic dye from water.

In this work, we successfully fabricated near-monodisperse colloids of a new type of inorganic fullerene-like structure (IF) of nickel hydroxychloride as the first example of the application of colloidal synthetic routes to the synthesis of IFs. The formation mechanism and interesting magnetic properties are briefly discussed.

CeO2-ZrO2 nanocages with controllable shapes, tunable compositions, narrow size distributions have been synthesized by using the monodispersed ceria clusters as templates.