J. Mater. Sci. Technol. ›› 2013, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (7): 613-618.DOI: 10.1016/j.jmst.2013.03.026

Previous Articles     Next Articles

One-step Synthesis of Shape-controllable Gold Nanoparticles and Their Application in Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering

Lanlan Sun, Dongxu Zhao, Meng Ding, Haifeng Zhao, Zhenzhong Zhang, Binghui Li, Dezhen Shen   

  1. State Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Applications, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130033, China
  • Received:2012-02-24 Revised:2012-07-06 Online:2013-07-30 Published:2013-06-08
  • Contact: Dongxu Zhao
  • Supported by:

    National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 21101146.

Abstract:

Gold nanoparticles (NPs) of various shapes were synthesized by a one-step method at ambient temperature in the presence of NaCl. 2-mercaptosuccinic acid (MSA) was used as both reducing agent and stabilizing agent. The shapes of gold NPs were controllable by simply tuning S/Au ratio (S is from MSA molecule, and S/Au ratio is controlled by tuning the volume of added MSA solution), and triangle, polygonal and spherical nanoparticles were obtained. This result suggested a new way to consider the effects of MSA on the growth of nanoparticles, which showed that MSA is a strong capping agent and facilitates more uniform growth of nanoparticles in every dimension. And other important factors on nanoparticles growth including NaCl and temperature were discussed. Furthermore, a typical probe molecule, 4-aminothiophenol (4-ATP) was used to test the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activity of these gold NPs and the results indicated good Raman activity on these substrates. And the enhancement factor (EF) at 1078 cm1 (a1) was estimated to be as large as 6.3 × 104 and 5.5 × 104 for triangular plates and truncated particles, respectively.

Key words: Nanoparticle, Shape, Controlled synthesis, Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)