A facile strategy for the synthesis of silver nanostructures with different morphologies

Abstract By the common seed-mediated growth method, the preparation of silver nanostructures with desired morphologies still remains a great challenge. In this paper, the same growth solution was used to prepare the desired anisotropic nanoparticles through different preparation procedures of silver seeds and nanoparticles. The citrate-capped silver seeds (common seeds) were confirmed to grow and aggregate to form silver nanorods in CTAB rod-like micelles by a common seed-mediated method (one-step growth). The interesting difference from the above method was that silver nanodisks were obtained by three-step growths of the seeds. Silver nanotriangles could be easily prepared with modified silver seeds that prepared by only changing the molar ratio of NaBH 4 to silver precursor and other conditions were the same as those in the preparation of common silver seeds. Furthermore, the yield of silver nanotriangles had a marked increase by adding Cl - into the growth solution of silver nanotriangles. In addition, the silver seeds capped with BSPP gradually grew up to form irregular polygon-shaped nanodisks with clear multiple-twinned structure. The proposed strategies hold great potential to be extended in the preparation of silver and other metal nanoparticles with different shapes.