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Updated: May 15, 2026
Gold Nanostar Synthesis with a Silver Seed Mediated Growth Method
Published on: January 15, 2012
Using binary surfactant mixtures to simultaneously improve the dimensional tunability and monodispersity in the
Xingchen Ye1, Chen Zheng, Jun Chen
1Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Abstract:
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 <25 nm) and thicker (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.
