Gold nanostars have sharp branches on their surface and such unique morphology can result in unusual plasmonic properties and remarkable applications. There have been several reports on the stronger activities in surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) for gold nanostars than spherical nanoparticles. Since gold nanostars are a product of kinetic process and they are thermodynamically unstable, several approaches have been developed to stabilize the star shape of these gold nanostars. In this talk, we report a new method to increase the stability of gold nanostars by introducing extra freezing ligands into the colloidal solutions. In-situ UV-vis spectroscopy was used to study the surface plasmon resonances of the reaction systems in order to monitor the process of nanostar formation and morphology evolution. Various ligands were studied to freeze the nanostars’ morphology. It is found that the freeze efficiency depends on the bonding strength between the ligands and surface of gold nanostars. The SERS activities of the resulting gold nanostars were examined and enhanced SERS detection was observed clearly on the gold nanostars with sharp branches.

Controlled syntheses of gold nanostars for stronger surface enhanced Raman scattering

255th National Meeting (2018)

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