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Presenter: Mahri Luxi Hayden

Faculty Sponsor: Joseph S. DuChene

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Chemistry and Materials Science

Session: Poster Session 3, 1:15 PM - 2:00 PM, Auditorium, A8

ABSTRACT

The shape control of metal nanocrystals has attracted significant attention due to their localized surface plasmon resonance properties, which offer wide-ranging applications in catalysis, electronics, photonics, and biomedicine. These shape-dependent optical responses have motivated extensive efforts to develop synthesis strategies capable of producing anisotropic Au nanostructures with tunable plasmonic absorption across the visible spectrum. Thus far, several strategies have been developed to control the morphology of Au nanoparticles, such as seed-mediated and seedless colloidal syntheses, and electrochemical synthesis. The investigation of colloidal synthesis of Au nanoparticles includes varying capping agents, reducing agents, temperature, and solution pH. Here, an already established seedless method for Au triangular nanoprisms was used to investigate the role of solution pH on the shape yield of the nanoprisms. The solution pH provides a simple way to modify reduction kinetics by altering the speciation of ascorbic acid (AA) in solution. We are investigating how the overall growth rate of the Au nanoparticles impacts the shape yield of Au nanoprisms and the size distribution. We anticipate that by altering the growth rate, it may be possible to not only optimize the shape yield and nanoprism uniformity, but also provide a simple route to obtaining other Au nanoparticle morphologies. By elucidating the relationship between nanoparticle growth rate and morphology, the results of these studies will be used to inform our development of electrochemical syntheses for anisotropic Au nanoprisms.