Surface plasmon modes of gold nanospheres, nanorods, and nanoplates in an organic solvent: phase-transfer from aqueous to organic media.

We present a process for the phase-transfer of gold nanoparticles from an aqueous to an organic medium with normal alkanethiols. This method can be applied not only to large nanospheres (d~100 nm) but also to anisotropic nanoparticles like nanorods and nanoplates. It allows the comparison of the nanoparticle optical properties when they are dispersed in both aqueous and organic media.