Controlled growth of gold nanowhiskers via a soft chemistry method

Synthesis of gold nanowhiskers with uniform lateral dimension (∼100 nm) and lengths up to ∼10 μm was achieved by a seed-mediated growth process involving utilization of silver nanoparticles as seeds and subsequent polymer-controlled growth in a refluxing system heated to ∼180 °C. Glycol was used as both solvent and reducing agent to produce silver nanoparticles, while poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDDA) was used as a shape-inducing additive to guide the growth of nanostructures into nanowhiskers. The obtained gold nanowhiskers were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and UV-Vis spectroscopy.