Nanostars shine bright for you

In this tutorial review, we summarise recent research into the controlled growth of gold nanoparticles of different morphologies and discuss the various chemical mechanisms that have been proposed to explain anisotropic growth. With the overview and discussion, we intended to select those published procedures that we consider more reliable and promising for synthesis of morphologies of interest. We expect this to be interesting to researchers in the wide variety of fields that can make use of metal nanoparticles.

Crystallization of concentrated colloidal suspensions was studied in real space with laser scanning confocal microscopy. Direct imaging in three dimensions allowed identification and observation of both nucleation and growth of crystalline regions, providing an experimental measure of properties of the nucleating crystallites. By following their evolution, we identified critical nuclei, determined nucleation rates, and measured the average surface tension of the crystal-liquid interface. The structure of the nuclei was the same as the bulk solid phase, random hexagonal close-packed, and their average shape was rather nonspherical, with rough rather than faceted surfaces.