Copolymerization of metal nanoparticles: a route to colloidal plasmonic copolymers.

The resemblance between colloidal and molecular polymerization reactions is very useful in fundamental studies of polymerization reactions, as well as in the development of new nanoscale systems with desired properties. Future applications of colloidal polymers will require nanoparticle ensembles with a high degree of complexity that can be realized by hetero-assembly of NPs with different dimensions, shapes, and compositions. A method has been developed to apply strategies from molecular copolymerization to the co-assembly of gold nanorods with different dimensions into random and block copolymer structures (plasmonic copolymers). The approach was extended to the co-assembly of random copolymers of gold and palladium nanorods. A kinetic model validated and further expanded the kinetic theories developed for molecular copolymerization reactions.