High-Temperature Seedless Synthesis of Gold Nanorods

Abstract

We demonstrate seedless synthesis of gold nanorods at high temperatures up to 97 °C. Using the correct silver nitrate concentration is crucial for formation of rod-shaped particles at all temperatures. We observed a decrease of nanorod length with increasing temperature, while the width stays constant throughout the temperature range. From kinetics studies, we show 3 orders of magnitude increase in nanorod growth rate when the temperature is raised from room temperature to 97 °C. From the temperature dependence of the growth rate, we obtain a average activation energy for growth on all facets of 90 ± 10 kJ mol^-1. High-temperature synthesis of gold nanorods presents a more attractive method for scalable flow-based production of gold nanorods.