HNO₃-assisted polyol synthesis of ultralarge single-crystalline Ag microplates and their far propagation length of surface plasmon polariton.

We developed a HNO3-assisted polyol reduction method to synthesize ultralarge single-crystalline Ag microplates routinely. The edge length of the synthesized Ag microplates reaches 50 μm, and their top facets are (111). The mechanism for dramatically enlarging single-crystalline Ag structure stems from a series of competitive anisotropic growths, primarily governed by carefully tuning the adsorption of Ag(0) by ethylene glycol and the desorption of Ag(0) by a cyanide ion on Ag(100). Finally, we measured the propagation length of surface plasmon polaritons along the air/Ag interface under 534 nm laser excitation. Our single-crystalline Ag microplate exhibited a propagation length (11.22 μm) considerably greater than that of the conventional E-gun deposited Ag thin film (5.27 μm).