The review paper “Role of Anions Associated with the Formation and Properties of Silver Clusters” written by Quan-Ming Wang’s group got published in ACS journal Account of Chemical Research (IF= 24.348) (2015,DOI:10.1021/acs.accounts.5b00007).

It is challenging to organize many metal centers together in an ordered way, while Quan-ming Wang’s group has developed the anion templates method to induce the formation of high-nuclearity clusters. And their extraordinary results have published in international top journals like J. Am. Chem. Soc. and Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.

The review summarized the importance of anions to silver clusters. The role of the anions is threefold: (a) an anion is advantageous in stabilizing a cluster via balancing local positive charges of the metal cations; (b) an anion template could help control the size and shape of a cluster product; (c) an anion can be a key factor in influencing the function of a cluster by bringing in its intrinsic properties. The existence of anions is not only for charge balance, but also has synergistic interaction with the metal center to exhibit special properties, like core-shell electron transfer, thermochromics and inter-cluster single-molecule magnet electron transfer. This review shows the important role of anion template method in building a high nuclear metal clusters, and also provides a new way for the controlled synthesis of complex molecules.