Light as an Orthogonal Synthetic Parameter in Metal Nanoparticle Growth

To drive the formation of nanoparticles with a targeted morphology, it is often necessary to accelerate or slow a specific chemical reaction out of the many involved in nanoparticle growth. However, isolating and controlling the complex and often competing interactions of chemical and thermal parameters in metal nanoparticle synthesis to yield tailorable and well-defined nanostructures is a significant challenge. This Perspective describes how visible light excitation of a plasmonic core material can be used to selectively modulate the rates of individual redox reactions in colloidal nanoparticle synthesis in ways that are orthogonal to purely thermochemical synthetic approaches. While this "plasmon-mediated synthesis" approach began as a method that was highly specific to silver nanoparticles, recent advances have begun to transform it into a more generalizable synthetic tool by expanding this light-driven kinetic control to redox reactions involving other metals, both plasmonic and poorly plasmonic.