Facile synthesis of core-shell and Janus particles via 2-D dendritic growth of gold film.
We report a facile method for the electroless deposition (ELD) of gold film via two-dimensional (2-D) dendritic growth. Our scheme employs protonated amine groups, which electrostatically attract both the negatively charged reducing agent and gold-precursor. This electrostatic interaction increases the local concentrations of gold-precursor and reducing agent near the silica surface to levels high enough for gold films with a 2-D fractal morphology to form directly on the surfaces of the amine-functionalized silica nanospheres by diffusion-limited aggregation. Our one-pot reaction avoids the need for seed attachment, which is typically employed for the growth of metallic shells on nanospheres. Therefore, the proposed method significantly reduces the number of processing steps required for the production of core-shell nanospheres. The gold morphologies were systematically investigated in terms of various synthesis variables, including solution pH, reducing agent concentration, and gold precursor injection speed. In addition, we synthesized gold-capped silica nanospheres via ELD of gold on a patterned array of silica nanospheres embedded in polystyrene (PS) film followed by dissolution of the PS matrix, thus demonstrating the potential utility of the proposed method in emerging fields of materials science such as patterning of noble metals and studies of nanometer-scale optics.
Jang
Se Gyu
SG
National Creative Research Initiative Center for Integrated Optofluidic Systems & Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea.
Kim
Se-Heon
SH
Lee
Su Yeon
SY
Jeong
Woong Chan
WC
Yang
Seung-Man
SM