Nanomaterials have attracted increasing interest due to their tunable morphologies, unique properties, and broad applications.  Gold nanostars are one of the most popularly studied plasmonic nanomaterials because of the highly branched nanostructures.   Precise control of the nanoscale branches on gold nanostars is extremely important.  Here we developed a facile <i>in-situ</i> UV-Vis spectroscopic method and studied the reaction kinetics on seed-mediated growth of gold nanostars.  The impacts of ligand concentration and seed amount on the formation of gold nanostars were systematically explored.  In addition, an atomic rearrangement model was proposed to explain the morphology evolution during the synthetic process.  A new approach of sudden addition of capping ligands was developed to synthesize gold nanostars with designed morphology.  This “ligand freeze” method can significantly advance the syntheses of gold nanostars and might be expanded to other metallic nanomaterials.  We will also present our recent work on the impact of morphology evolution on the SERS activities of gold nanostars.

Ligand-induced freeze of gold nanostars and their SERS activities

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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