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Controlled synthesis of monodisperse gold nanorods with different aspect ratios in the presence of aromatic additives

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Abstract

This paper reports the synthesis of monodisperse gold nanorods (GNRs) via a simple seeded growth approach in the presence of different aromatic additives, such as 7-bromo-3-hydroxy-2-naphthoic acid (7-BrHNA), 3-hydroxy-2-naphthoic acid (HNA), 5-bromosalicylic acid (5-BrSA), salicylic acid (SA), or phenol (PhOH). Effects of the aromatic additives and hydrochloric acid (HCl) on the structure and optical properties of the synthesized GNRs were investigated. The longitudinal surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) peak wavelength of the resulting GNRs was found to be dependent on the aromatic additive in the following sequence: 5-BrSA (778 nm) > 7-BrHNA (706 nm) > SA (688 nm) > HNA (676 nm) > PhOH (638 nm) without the addition of HCl, but this was changed to 7-BrHNA (920 nm) > SA (890 nm) > HNA (872 nm) > PhOH (858 nm) > 5-BrSA (816 nm) or 7-BrHNA (1,005 nm) > PhOH (995 nm) > SA (990 nm) > HNA (980 nm) > 5-BrSA (815 nm) with the addition of HCl or HNO3, respectively. The LSPR peak wavelength was increased with the increasing concentration of 7-BrHNA without HCl addition; however, there was a maximum LSPR peak wavelength when HCl was added. Interestingly, the LSPR peak wavelength was also increased with the amount of HCl added. The results presented here thus established a simple approach to synthesize monodisperse GNRs of different LSPR wavelengths.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Grant No.81171439), the National Key Technology R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology (2012BAI18B01), the European Union Marie Curie Action via a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship to S.G. (Grant No. PIIF-GA-2012-331281), and the University of Leeds (UK).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Pharmacy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200240, People’s Republic of China

    Yun Wang, Feihu Wang, Yuanyuan Shen, Aijie Guo, Jieying Liu, Xiao Zhang & Shengrong Guo

  2. School of Chemistry and Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Yuan Guo, Dejian Zhou & Shengrong Guo

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, 11, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

    Rongjun Chen

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  1. Yun Wang
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  9. Dejian Zhou
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Correspondence to Dejian Zhou or Shengrong Guo.

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Wang, Y., Wang, F., Guo, Y. et al. Controlled synthesis of monodisperse gold nanorods with different aspect ratios in the presence of aromatic additives. J Nanopart Res 16, 2806 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-014-2806-3

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