Facile synthesis of gold nanoworms with a tunable length and aspect ratio through oriented attachment of nanoparticles.

We report a seedless protocol based on the oriented attachment of nanoparticles for the synthesis of Au nanoworms (NWs). NWs are grown by reducing HAuCl4 with ascorbic acid (AA) in high pH reaction medium and in the presence of growth directional agents, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and AgNO3. Although we have used the same reducing and growth directional agents as typically used for the synthesis of Au nanorods, the growth mechanism of NWs is markedly different from that of nanorods. Instead of the anisotropic growth of seed particles, the NWs grow through oriented attachment of nanoparticles. By varying different reaction parameters we have seen that the length of NWs can be controlled from tens of nanometers to a micrometer. Furthermore, the aspect ratio (AR) can be tuned from 2 to 30. This is almost the whole range of AR and length for Au nanorods so far achieved with seed-mediated multiple step synthesis protocols.