Borohydride oxidation electrocatalysis at individual, shape‐controlled Au nanoparticles

We report a dramatically improved synthesis of colloidal gold nanorods (NRs) using a binary surfactant mixture composed of hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and sodium oleate (NaOL). Both thin (diameter 30 nm) gold NRs with exceptional monodispersity and broadly tunable longitudinal surface plasmon resonance can be synthesized using seeded growth at reduced CTAB concentrations (as low as 0.037 M). The CTAB-NaOL binary surfactant mixture overcomes the difficulty of growing uniform thick gold NRs often associated with the single-component CTAB system and greatly expands the dimensions of gold NRs that are accessible through a one-pot seeded growth process. Gold NRs with large overall dimensions and thus high scattering/absorption ratios are ideal for scattering-based applications such as biolabeling as well as the enhancement of optical processes.

Au nanotriangles display interesting nanoplasmonic features with potential application in various fields. However, such applications have been hindered by the lack of efficient synthetic methods yielding sufficient size and shape monodispersity, as well as by insufficient morphological stability. We present here a synthesis and purification protocol that efficiently addresses these issues. The size of the nanotriangles can be tuned within a wide range by simply changing the experimental parameters. The obtained monodispersity leads to extended self-assembly, not only on electron microscopy grids but also at the air-liquid interface, allowing transfer onto centimeter-size substrates. These extended monolayers show promising performance as surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates, as demonstrated for thiophenol detection.