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Nano Research 2023, 16(4): 5087-5097 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5214-5
Research Article | Issue | Published: 06 December 2022

Engineering miniature gold nanorods with tailorable plasmonic wavelength in NIR region via ternary surfactants mediated growth

Show Author's Information Xiaoning Luo1,  Xiaoyuan Wang1,  Lingli Zhang1,  Liping Song1,2( ),  Zhiwei Sun1,  Yu Zhao1,  Fengmei Su3,  Youju Huang1( )
College of Material, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Key Laboratory of Organosilicon Chemistry and Material Technology, Ministry of Education, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 311121, China
National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Anhui Provincial Engineering, Laboratory of Advanced Functional Polymer Film, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
National Engineering Research Centre for Advanced Polymer Processing Technology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450002, China
Keywords:
photothermal, miniature gold nanorods, ternary surfactants, seed mediated growth method, near infrared (NIR) region
Topics:
Nanostructured materials
Cite this article:
Luo X, Wang X, Zhang L, et al. Engineering miniature gold nanorods with tailorable plasmonic wavelength in NIR region via ternary surfactants mediated growth. Nano Research, 2023, 16(4): 5087-5097. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5214-5
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Plasmonic nanoparticles are endowed profound capability for sensing, biomedicine, and cancer therapy. However, the inaccessibly adjustable wavelength in near infrared (NIR) region window and size limit for the particles penetration in tumor strongly hinder their developments. Miniature gold nanorods (mini-Au NRs) with diameter less than 12 nm can effectively address this challenge due to the tiny size and tailorable NIR absorption. Herein, we adopt ternary surfactants (hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB), sodium oleate (NaOL), and sodium salicylate (NaSal)) mediated growth strategy to precisely synthesize miniature Au NRs under micelle space-confinement. Importantly, the selectively dense accumulation of ternary surfactants can efficiently improve the micellar stacking parameters (p) and lower micellar free energy (F), further tends to achieve the formation of Au NRs with tiny diameter and high purity. Compared with that of conventional methods, the purity of mini-Au NRs up to 100% can be dramatically improved via varying the relative concentration of ternary surfactants. The diameter of Au NRs can be dynamically controlled to 6, 8, and 11 nm through regulating the concentration of silver nitrate and the mole ratio of ternary surfactants. Such ternary surfactants system is favorable for the aging of tiny Au NRs, and further enables the aspect ratio-tunable in the region from 2.70 to 7.32, as well as tailorable plasmonic wavelength in wide NIR window from 700 to 1,147 nm. Therefore, our findings shed a light on the precise preparation of small sized plasmonic nanoparticles and pave the way to applications in biomedicine, imaging, and cancer therapy.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Engineering miniature gold nanorods with tailorable plasmonic wavelength in NIR region via ternary surfactants mediated growth

Show Author's information Xiaoning Luo1, Xiaoyuan Wang1, Lingli Zhang1, Liping Song1,2( ), Zhiwei Sun1, Yu Zhao1, Fengmei Su3, Youju Huang1( )
College of Material, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Key Laboratory of Organosilicon Chemistry and Material Technology, Ministry of Education, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 311121, China
National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Anhui Provincial Engineering, Laboratory of Advanced Functional Polymer Film, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
National Engineering Research Centre for Advanced Polymer Processing Technology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450002, China

Abstract

Plasmonic nanoparticles are endowed profound capability for sensing, biomedicine, and cancer therapy. However, the inaccessibly adjustable wavelength in near infrared (NIR) region window and size limit for the particles penetration in tumor strongly hinder their developments. Miniature gold nanorods (mini-Au NRs) with diameter less than 12 nm can effectively address this challenge due to the tiny size and tailorable NIR absorption. Herein, we adopt ternary surfactants (hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB), sodium oleate (NaOL), and sodium salicylate (NaSal)) mediated growth strategy to precisely synthesize miniature Au NRs under micelle space-confinement. Importantly, the selectively dense accumulation of ternary surfactants can efficiently improve the micellar stacking parameters (p) and lower micellar free energy (F), further tends to achieve the formation of Au NRs with tiny diameter and high purity. Compared with that of conventional methods, the purity of mini-Au NRs up to 100% can be dramatically improved via varying the relative concentration of ternary surfactants. The diameter of Au NRs can be dynamically controlled to 6, 8, and 11 nm through regulating the concentration of silver nitrate and the mole ratio of ternary surfactants. Such ternary surfactants system is favorable for the aging of tiny Au NRs, and further enables the aspect ratio-tunable in the region from 2.70 to 7.32, as well as tailorable plasmonic wavelength in wide NIR window from 700 to 1,147 nm. Therefore, our findings shed a light on the precise preparation of small sized plasmonic nanoparticles and pave the way to applications in biomedicine, imaging, and cancer therapy.

Keywords: photothermal, miniature gold nanorods, ternary surfactants, seed mediated growth method, near infrared (NIR) region

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 08 September 2022
Revised: 16 October 2022
Accepted: 17 October 2022
Published: 06 December 2022
Issue date: April 2023

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2022

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

We greatly acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52222316, 52103325, and 52111530128), the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. Z22B050001), Ten Thousand People Plan of Zhejiang Province (No. 2019R51012), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2022M713020).

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