Precisely Tailor the Longitudinal Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance of Gold Nanorods by Mild Oxidation with NaNO2

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In this work, we introduce a new method to precisely tailor the longitudinal localized surface plasmon resonance (LLSPR) wavelengths of gold nanorods (GNRs) through the use of NaNO2 as the oxidant. The effects of the concentrations of NaNO2, NH4Br and HCl on the reaction kinetics were investigated separately. To prepare GNRs with desired LLSPR wavelengths, equations were derived and were proved to be able to guide the tailoring of the LLSPR wavelengths through carefully tuning either the amount of NaNO2 or the reaction time. TEM characterizations performed on two representative sets of GNRs show that the GNRs obtained exhibited shortened lengths but unchanged diameter with good monodispersity. In particular, GNRs with targeted LLSPR at 800 nm, 750 nm, 700 nm and 650 nm were successfully synthesized with relative errors of only 1 %∼5 %. This method shall promote more applications of GNRs and may advance the synthesis of other metal nanoparticles.