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Evolution of stellated gold nanoparticles: New conceptual insights into controlling the surface processes

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Abstract

Understanding the surface processes (deposition and surface diffusion) that occur at or close to the surface of growing nanoparticles is important for fabricating reproducibly stellated or branched gold nanoparticles with precise control over arm length and spatial orientation of arms around the core. By employing a simple seed-mediated strategy, we investigate the key synthetic variables for precise tuning of in situ surface processes (competition between the deposition and surface diffusion). These variables include the reduction rate of a reaction, the packing density of molecules/ions on the high surface energy facets, and temperature. As a result, the thermodynamically stabilized nanoparticles (cuboctahedron and truncated cube) and kinetic products (cube, concave cube, octapod, stellated octahedron, and rhombic dodecahedron) in different sizes with high quantitative shape yield (> 80%) can be obtained depending on the reduction rate of reaction and the packing density of molecules/ions. With computer simulation, we studied the stability of stellated (branched structure) and non-stellated (non-branched structure) gold nanoparticles at high temperature. We construct a morphology phase diagram by varying different synthetic parameters, illustrating the formation of both stellated and non-stellated gold nanoparticles in a range of reaction conditions. The stellated gold nanoparticles display shape-dependent optical properties and can be self-assembled into highly ordered superstructures to achieve an enhanced plasmonic response. Our strategy can be applied to other metal systems, allowing for the rational design of advanced new stellated metal nanoparticles with fascinating symmetry dependent plasmonic, catalytic, and electronic properties for technological applications.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. The authors acknowledge the Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, and the Sydney Nano, University of Sydney with technical support for the materials characterization. Authors would like to thank IITM-UniSyd Global alliance for partial research support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ARC Centre for Innovative BioEngineering, Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Research Unit, Sydney Nano Institute and the School of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2008, Australia

    Gurvinder Singh, Hesamodin Jami, Pooria Lesani, Yogambha Ramaswamy & Hala Zreiqat

  2. Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India

    Shubhayan Bhattacharya & Prem B. Bisht

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  1. Gurvinder Singh
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  2. Hesamodin Jami
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  3. Pooria Lesani
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  4. Shubhayan Bhattacharya
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  5. Yogambha Ramaswamy
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  7. Hala Zreiqat
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Correspondence to Gurvinder Singh or Hala Zreiqat.

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Singh, G., Jami, H., Lesani, P. et al. Evolution of stellated gold nanoparticles: New conceptual insights into controlling the surface processes. Nano Res. 15, 1260–1268 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3635-1

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