High speed stirring at elevated temperatures is shown to be effective in the symmetry breaking process needed for the growth of the hard-to-synthesize silver nanorods from the polyol reduction of silver ions. This process competes with the facile formation of more symmetrical, spherical, and cubic nanoparticles. Reducing the stirring speeds during seed formation lowers the yield of nanorods. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the formation of a nanometer-scale  thin boundary region between a solid facet of the nanoparticle and the liquid around it, and the accommodation processes of metal atoms transported through this boundary region from the liquid to the solid growth interface, are frustrated by sufficiently fast shear flow caused by high-frequency stirring.Mahmoud A. Mahmoud , Mostafa A. El-Sayed , Jianping Gao, and Uzi Landman, Nano letters DOI:  10.1021/nl402305n

High frequency mechanical stirring initiates anisotropic growth of seeds requisite for synthesis of asymmetric metallic nanoparticles like silver nanorods

247th National Meeting (2014)

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