Colloidal nanocrystal shape and size control: the case of cobalt

We show that a relatively simple approach for controlling the colloidal synthesis of anisotropic cadmium selenide semiconductor nanorods can be extended to the size-controlled preparation of magnetic cobalt nanorods as well as spherically shaped nanocrystals. This approach helps define a minimum feature set needed to separately control the sizes and shapes of nanocrystals. The resulting cobalt nanocrystals produce interesting two- and three-dimensional superstructures, including ribbons of nanorods.