Process Window for Seeded Growth of Arrays of Quasi-Spherical Substrate-Supported Au Nanoparticles

The controlled growth of surface-supported metal nanoparticles (NPs) is essential to a broad range of applications. To this end, we explore the seeded growth of highly ordered arrays of substrate-supported Au NPs through a fully orthogonal design of experiment (DoE) scheme applied to a reaction system consisting of HAuCl₄, citrate, and hydrogen peroxide. Scanning electron microscopy in combination with digital image analysis (DIA) is used to quantitatively characterize the resultant NP populations in terms of both particle and array features. The effective optical properties of the NP arrays are additionally analyzed using spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), allowing characteristics of the localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) of the arrays to be quantified. We study the dependence of the DIA- and SE-extracted features on the different reagent concentrations through modeling using multiple linear regression with backward elimination of independent variables. A process window is identified for which uniform arrays of quasi-spherical Au NPs are grown over large surface areas. Aside from reagent concentrations the system is highly sensitive to the hydrodynamic conditions during the deposition. This issue is likely caused by an Au precursor mass-transport limitation of the reduction reaction and it is found that agitation of the growth medium is best avoided to ensure a macroscopically even deposition. Parasitic homogeneous nucleation can also be a challenge and was separately studied in a full DoE scheme with equivalent growth media but without substrates, using optical tracking of the solutions over time. Conditions yielding quasi-spherical surface-supported NPs are found to also be affiliated with strong tendencies for parasitic homogeneous nucleation and thereby loss of Au precursor, but addition of polyvinyl alcohol can possibly help alleviate this issue.