Fig. 3.

Probing the nanoparticle synthetic pathways using XPS. (A) Schematic of the three pathways for polymer-mediated nanoparticle formation on surfaces. Mⁿ⁺ and M⁰ denote metal ions and fully reduced metal, respectively. Δ₁ and Δ₂ correspond to the two heating cycles at T_low and T_high, respectively. (B) The spectra are collected before annealing (black), after annealing at T_low (blue), and after annealing at T_high (red) for Au (Left), Pt (Center), and Fe (Right). All spectra are shifted vertically for clarity. Dashed lines denote the initial and final peak positions.