Aqueous-based route toward noble metal nanocrystals: morphology-controlled synthesis and their applications

Noble metal nanocrystals with controlled morphologies play important role in many fields, such as catalysis and SERS, etc. To date, solution-based methods developed to synthesize nanocrystals mainly exploit organic reagents as solvents including polyol, oleic acid/oleylamine, toluene, diphenyl ether and so on. In organic solvent systems, expensive organometallic precursors and toxic organic solvents are often used, bringing about substantial environmental issues. In this article, based on our recent endeavors, we will summarize facile, general aqueous methods to synthesize monodisperse, uniform, single and binary noble metal nanostructures and their applications in liquid fuel cells. We believe this review article will be useful to those devoted to the catalysis and nanocrystal fields.