Tunable growth of silver nanobelts on monolithic activated carbon with size-dependent plasmonic response

Silver is one of the most important materials in plasmonics. Tuning the size of various silver nanostructures has been actively pursued in the last decade. However, silver nanobelt, a typical one-dimensional silver nanostructure, has not been systematically studied as to tuning its size for controllable plasmonic response. Here we show that silver nanobelts, with mean width ranging from 45 to 105 nm and thickness at ca. 13 nm, can grow abundantly on monolithic activated carbon (MAC) through a galvanic-cell reaction mechanism. The widths of silver nanobelts are positively correlated to the growth temperatures. The width/thickness ratio of the silver nanobelts can be adjusted so that their transversal plasmonic absorption peaks can nearly span the whole visible light band, which endows them with different colours. This work demonstrates the great versatility of a simple, green and conceptually novel approach in controlled synthesis of noble metal nanostructures.