ISSN 1061-933X, Colloid Journal, 2018, Vol. 80, No. 5, pp. 541–549. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2018.

Original Russian Text © N.A. Salavatov, O.V. Dement’eva, A.I. Mikhailichenko, V.M. Rudoy, 2018, published in Kolloidnyi Zhurnal, 2018, Vol. 80, No. 5, pp. 571–580.

Some Aspects of Seedless Synthesis of Gold Nanorods

N. A. Salavatova, b, O.V. Dement’evaa, *, A. I. Mikhailichenkob, and V. M. Rudoya
aFrumkin Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 119071 Russia
b
Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, Moscow, 125047 Russia
*e-mail: dema_ol@mail.ru
Received April 20, 2018

Abstract—Seedless synthesis of gold nanorods with the use of sodium borohydride and hydroquinone as
reductants of metal ions has been systematically studied. The effect of reaction system composition on the
morphology and optical characteristics of the formed particles has been determined. It has been found that
the position of the band of the longitudinal surface plasmon resonance of the nanorods varies nonmonotoni-
cally with variations in the concentration of hydroquinone or silver nitrate. The seedless synthesis has been
shown to yield high-quality gold nanorods, with the tunable position of their longitudinal surface plasmon
resonance in a wide spectral range (from 700 to ∼1050 nm). Therewith, the conversion of metal ions is no
lower than 78 wt %.

DOI: 10.1134/S1061933X18050149

INTRODUCTION or aromatic compounds [47] in a reaction medium;

Anisotropic gold nanoparticles, primarily gold
nanorods (GNRs), have attracted considerable atten-
tion from researchers. This is due to the possibility of
“tuning” the position of longitudinal localized surface
plasmon resonance (LSPR) of gold nanorods to a
desired wavelength in the near-IR spectral region by
varying their aspect ratio, i.e., the length-to-diameter
ratio of the particles. This advantage of GNRs is inten-
sively used for solving different problems of nanoplas-
monics relevant to the creation of high-sensitivity sen-
sors [1–6], unique media for recording and storage of
information [7], and sources of radiation (including
coherent radiation) [8]), as well as the development of
new methods for tumor diagnostics and therapy (ther-
anostics) [9–16].
The so-called “seeded synthesis” proposed by
Murphy and improved by El-Sayed [17–20] is the
method most widely used for producing GNRs. It
consists in the preliminary preparation of spherical
seed Au nanoparticles with ultrasmall sizes followed
by their growing up to the formation of GNRs in “soft
templates,” i.e., micelles of cetyltrimethylammonium
bromide CTAB [17–20].
There is a number of papers devoted to studying the
mechanism of seeded growth of GNRs and the kinet-
ics of this process [21–24] with the aim of providing
higher yield of GNRs and finer tuning the longitudinal
LSPR maximum position. The influence of many
parameters of the synthesis, such as the nature of a
templating surfactant [20, 24–34]; the pH of a reac-
tion medium [26, 35, 36]; the presence of Ag+ ions [17,
18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 37–43], halide ions [28, 44–46],
the size, surface chemistry, and “age” of seed particles
[48–51]; temperature [52]; and reductant type [53–
55], on the yield, polydispersity, and size of GNRs has
been thoroughly studied.
In spite of the considerable body of accumulated
experimental data, some questions remain open. For
example, the role of Ag+ ions in the anisotropic growth
of GNRs is still unclear. In the opinion of most
authors [17, 24, 38, 41, 43], it consists in the blockage
of faces (110) of growing GNRs through the formation
of a (mono)layer of Ag0 atoms on their surface via the
underpotential deposition mechanism or as a result of
the joint reduction of gold and silver ions (so-called
codeposition). According to an alternative point of
view, this occurs due to the selective adsorption of
CТА+−Br–−Ag+ complex. Moreover, the addition of
silver ions may favor the transformation of spherical
CTAB micelles into cylindrical ones [17]. Naturally, a
combined action of several mechanisms is possible.
There are different opinions on the selection of an
optimal reductant for metal ions at the stage of GNR
growth. Ascorbic acid (AA) is, as a rule, used for this
purpose [17–20]. However, it is known that the opti-
mum range of the АA/Au(III) molar ratios that pro-
vide high yields of GNRs is very narrow (1.1–1.15)
[53–55]. As a result, the conversion of Au(III) into
Au(0) in this reaction is no higher than 15% [53–55].
At the same time, according to [54, 55], other reduc-
tants, such as hydroquinone (HQ) [54] and dopamine
[55], can be used even in a tenfold excess relative to the
reaction stoichiometry. This makes it possible to reach

541
542 SALAVATOV et al.
almost 100% conversion of Au(III) into Au(0), with
the yield of GNR remaining rather high.
Thus, it is obvious that the seeded synthesis of
GNRs has a number of serious drawbacks. In particu-
lar, they are the need to use CTAB of a specific type
(purity) [32–34], a very short “lifetime” of seed parti-
cles [49, 51], and a long reaction time (no less than
15–20 h). Moreover, the structural, morphological,
and, hence, optical characteristics of the obtained
GNRs strongly depend on the pH of a medium and
the volume of a reaction system. The latter circum-
stance makes the scaling of the synthesis very difficult
[24, 56].
The aforementioned disadvantages substantially
deteriorate the reproducibility of GNR synthesis,
thereby hindering its practical use. Therefore, the one-
pot “seedless” synthesis of GNRs is becoming
increasingly popular [50, 57–65]. This method is
based on the successive introduction of mild and
strong reductants into a reaction system. In this case,
GNRs are formed in the same reaction system via sev-
eral basic stages. Initially, Au(III) ions solubilized in
CTAB micelles are reduced to Au(I)1 under the action
of the mild reductant. The subsequent addition of the
strong reductant results in the transformation of some
fraction of Au(I) ions into Au(0) and the formation of
seed particles, which then grow under the action of the
mild reductant to yield GNRs.
Note that AA is not widely used for the seedless
synthesis of GNRs. Greater attention is focused on
other reductants [59–63, 65], in particular, HQ. To a
significant extent, this is caused by the fact that the use
of HQ ensures high conversion of Au(III) into Au(0).
The seedless synthesis of GNRs is devoid of most
of the aforementioned disadvantages, and this circum-
stance is of great importance for the preparation of
nanorods with a preset position of LPSR and their
practical application. At the same time, it should be
emphasized that, at present, studies devoted to the
realization of this approach are relatively scarce.
Moreover, their authors often introduce additional
components (e.g., 5-bromosalycylic [63] and/or
hydrochloric acids [61, 63]) to reaction systems. These
components influence the structure of a micellar tem-
plate and/or the pH of a medium, thereby making dif-
ficult not only the comparison of the data obtained,
but also the understanding of the process as a whole.
Therefore, the goal of this work is to systematically
study the influence of the conditions of the GNRs
seedless synthesis with the use of sodium borohydride
and HQ as reductants of metal ions on the morphol-
ogy and optical characteristics of resulting particles.
Therewith, unlike the authors of previous studies [61,
1 According to the data of a number of works (see, e.g., [64] and
references therein), this solubilization is caused by the formation
of water-insoluble complex of AuCl4− anions with CTAB cat-
ions.
63], we do not intend to add any other components
into the reaction system with the exception of silver
nitrate.
EXPERIMENTAL
Chloroauric acid trihydrate (basic substance con-
tent of ≥99%, Acros Organics) and CТАB (≥96%),
hydroquinone (≥99.5%), silver nitrate (99.9999%)2,
and sodium borohydride (99%) produced by Sigma-
Aldrich were used as reagents in the experiments.
All solutions were prepared in distilled water, which
was additionally deionized with an Arium 611VF setup
(Sartorius, Germany), with a specific conductivity of
no higher than 0.060 μS/cm.
Extinction spectra of colloidal solutions were
recorded with an Evolution 300 double-beam spectro-
photometer (Thermo Electron Corp., United States)
within a wavelength range of 350–1100 nm in poly-
acrylic cells with a light path of 10 mm; a cell with dis-
tilled water was placed into the reference beam. In all
cases, GNR dispersions were preliminarily diluted by
four times because of their high optical density. Con-
version of Au(III) into Au(0) was estimated from opti-
cal density D of the dispersions at a wavelength of
390 nm. This value corresponds to the region of inter-
band transitions of gold, where the optical density of a
colloidal solution is determined by metal concentra-
tion CAu0 alone and is independent of the particle
shape. The calculations were performed by the equa-
tion CAu0 = 0.355D390 proposed in [22].
The morphology and sizes of GNRs were studied
with a Leo-912 AB Omega high-resolution transmis-
sion electron microscope (HRTEM) (Carl Zeiss, Ger-
many) operating at an accelerating voltage of 100 kV.
For this purpose, a droplet of a dispersion was placed
onto a carbon-film-coated copper grid and dried. The
GNR size distributions were plotted by processing the
images of at least 100 particles for each sample.
The synthesis of GNRs was based on the protocol
developed previously [65]. The experiments were car-
ried out as follows. A 100-mL flask was charged with
CTAB (2 g), water (50 mL) was added, and the mix-
ture was stirred intensely in a water bath at 30°C. After
CTAB was completely dissolved, a 0.01 M HAuCl4
solution (2.2 mL), a 0.02 M AgNO3 solution (0.20–
0.75 mL), a 0.14 M hydroquinone solution (0.5–
2.0 mL), and a 0.005 M NaBH4 solution (0.1–0.4 mL)
were successively added to the solution with intervals
of 5 min. Thirty seconds after the addition of NaBH4,
the stirring was stopped, and the reaction mixture was
left to stand in the water bath at 30°C for 24 h. Then,
excess CTAB was removed from the GNR dispersion
2 Preliminary
experiments have shown that storage of AgNO3
leads to the formation of impurities, which negatively affect the
quality of resulting GNRs. Therefore, silver nitrate was, in most
cases, additionally recrystallized before the synthesis.
COLLOID JOURNAL Vol. 80 No. 5 2018
 SOME ASPECTS OF SEEDLESS SYNTHESIS 543

Table 1. The influence of the reaction mixture composition on size and optical characteristics of GNRs*
C AgNO3 , CHQ, СNaBH4 , Position of longitudinal
No. GNR length, nm GNR diameter, nm GNR aspect ratio
mM mМ μМ LSPR, nm
1 9.1 62.7 ± 10.4 9.6 ± 0.7 6.5 1048
2 18.2 28.0 ± 3.2 7.0 ± 0.5 4.0 866
5.1
3 27.3 15.5 ± 3 5.0 ± 0.4 3.1 784
4 0.2 36.4 12.0 ± 3 4.8 ± 0.5 2.5 742
5 4.0 864
6 2.6 46.6 ± 6.2 7.8 ± 0.4 6.0 1044
7 1.3 875
8 0.07 18.2 31.0 ± 4.8 8.9 ± 1.1 3.5 793
9 0.13 40.6 ± 4.6 8.0 ± 0.6 5.1 927
5.1
10 0.17 44.6 ± 5.3 8.0 ± 0.5 5.6 986
11 0.27 856
* In all experiments, the concentration of chloroauric acid was equal to 0.4 μМ.

using a Universal 320R centrifuge (Hettich, Ger-
many). The centrifugation was carried out for 1 h at
14000 rpm. Then the supernatant was decanted, while
the precipitate was redispersed in water using a Sapfir
ultrasonic bath. The latter procedure was repeated
twice.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
As has previously been shown [65], our protocol
enables one to prepare GNRs of rather high quality.
Wherein, there is a possibility of fine tuning the posi-
tion of the longitudinal LSPR of nanorods by varying
the synthesis temperature: as the temperature is
increased from 30 to 40°C, the plasmon band shifts to
shorter wavelengths from 1100 to 920 nm. It should,
however, be noted that the quality of the plasmon
band somewhat decreases, thereby suggesting the
broadening of the particle size distribution.
In this work, the effect of the reaction system com-
position on the quality and optical characteristics of
the synthesized GNRs is analyzed.
First, let us consider the results obtained upon
varying the content of the strong reductant, sodium
borohydride. Its concentration was varied from 9.1 to
36.4 μМ (Table 1). According to the stoichiometry of
the reaction, the fraction of Au(I) ions reduced under
these conditions to Au(0) must be from ∼18 to ∼73%.
The experimental results have shown that, upon
the addition of the NaBH4 solution to the reaction sys-
tem, it gradually acquires a weak reddish-brown color,
thereby indicating the formation of seed gold
nanoparticles. The rate of this process increases sig-
nificantly with NaBH4 concentration. Then, the
GNRs grow rather rapidly. Already 1 h after the onset
of the process, the spectra of all sols exhibit distinctly
pronounced peaks corresponding to the transverse
and longitudinal LSPR. The positions of these peaks
remain almost unchanged with time, while their
intensity grows rapidly to reach its maximum value
over 2–3 h.
The analysis of the prepared sols by HRTEM has
shown that, in all cases, the number fraction of GNRs
is 83–85% (Fig. 1) of the particles present in the sols.
The gold nanorods are cigar-shaped and have a rather
narrow size distribution. Therewith, a rise in NaBH4
concentration leads to a reduction in both the size and
aspect ratio of the GNRs (see also Table 1). This is
quite natural, because the increase in CNaBH4 leads to
the formation of a greater number of seed particles,
whereas the amount of metal ions participating in the
GNR formation diminishes.
Figure 2 shows the extinction spectra of the synthe-
sized sols. Their patterns indicate high quality of all
obtained GNRs. In particular, the intensity ratio of
the bands attributed to the longitudinal and transverse
LSPR varies from ∼4 to ∼13, thereby corresponding to
a high yield of GNRs in the synthesis [53, 66]. The
transverse LSPR of the nanorods is observed at
approximately 500 nm. At the same time, in accor-
dance with the Mie–Gans theory [67], the position of
the longitudinal LSPR shifts toward longer wave-
lengths up to ∼1050 nm with an increase in the aspect
ratio of GNRs. GNRs with such high aspect ratios are
of considerable interest as applied to the tumor thera-
nostics using the lasers operating in the second trans-
parency window of biological tissues [68]. Note that,
such GNRs are rather difficult to prepare by the
seeded growth.
Subsequent experiments have shown that the con-
version of Au(III) ions into Au(0) in the synthesis of

COLLOID JOURNAL Vol. 80 No. 5 2018

544 SALAVATOV et al.
100 nm
(а)
(c)
Fig. 1. Micrographs of GNRs prepared at NaBH4 concentrations in the system of (a) 9.1, (b) 18.2, and (c) 36.4 μМ.
GNRs is almost independent of NaBH4 concentration
and amounts to nearly 82 wt %. This value is markedly
higher than that presented in the majority of papers on
the seeded synthesis of GNRs (see above).
Let us consider the results of studying the effect of
HQ content in the reaction system on the optical char-
acteristics of GNR.
Figure 3a shows the spectra of hydrosols synthe-
sized at CHQ varied in a range of 1.3–5.1 mМ (in all
cases HQ was added in a significant excess relative to
its stoichiometric ratio with HAuCl4). It is seen that
the position of the longitudinal LSPR of nanorods
varies nonmonotonically with HQ concentration
(Fig. 3b, Table 1). This fact seems to suggest that HQ
plays several roles in the process of the GNR forma-
tion. In particular, HQ may not only serve as a reduc-
50 nm
(b)
50 nm
tant of metal ions, but also be incorporated into the
CTAB bilayer, thereby affecting the structure of the
micellar template [61, 69]. The validity of this assump-
tion is also confirmed by our preliminary findings that
the addition of HQ to a micellar CTAB solution leads
to increase in micelle sizes. Moreover, it must be taken
into account that HQ oxidation decreases the pH of
the medium and may influence the morphology and
optical characteristics of GNRs.
Subsequent experiments have shown that a
decrease of the HQ content in the system leads to a
reduction in the rate of GNR growth. Wherein we
observe not only a gradual increase in the optical den-
sity of a colloidal solution over time, but also an essen-
tial bathochromic shift of the longitudinal LSPR
which takes place primarily due to a rise in the aspect
ratio of GNRs (Fig. 4).
COLLOID JOURNAL Vol. 80 No. 5 2018
 SOME ASPECTS OF SEEDLESS SYNTHESIS 545

Optical density (a)

Optical density
1.4 2
1.4
1
1.2
1.2
1.0 1.0 1
2
0.8 0.8 3
0.6 3 0.6 4
4
0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2

0 0
400 600 800 1000 400 600 800 1000
Wavelength, nm Wavelength, nm
(b)
Fig. 2. Extinction spectra of GNRs synthesized at NaBH4 Position of longitudinal LSPR, nm
concentrations in the system of (1) 9.1, (2) 18.2, (3) 27.3, 1050
and (4) 36.4 μМ. Concentrations of other reagents are
given in Table 1.
1000
Figure 5 shows the kinetic curves of GNR growth
at different HQ concentrations.3 It can be seen that 950
our experimental data are adequately described by the
equation that is often used to analyze the kinetics of
autocatalytic reactions [70]4: 900

[Au(0)]t
[ Au(I)]0 + [ Au(0)]0
= , (1)
[ Au(I)]0
1+ exp ( − ([ Au(I)]0 + [ Au(0)]0 ) kt )
[ Au(0)]0
where [Au(I)]0 is the initial concentration of metal
ions; [Au(0)]0 and [Au(0)]t are the initial and current
concentrations of Au metal, respectively; k is the
apparent rate constant of the reaction; and t is the
reaction time.
It is also seen that the apparent rate constant of
GNR growth increases almost linearly with HQ con-
centration (Table 2). However, it must be taken into
account that this is only a preliminary result. For a
more detailed study of the process kinetics, further
experiments are required, which are beyond the scope
of this study.
Now let us consider the results of studying the
effect of AgNO3 concentration in the reaction system
on the characteristics of GNRs synthesized by the
seedless growth.
It follows from the extinction spectra of the synthe-
sized sols (Fig. 6) that, similarly to the case of HQ, the
3 It
should be emphasized that the stage of reduction of Au(III)
ions to Au(I) ions has, in this case, been excluded from the con-
sideration.
4 The kinetic curves were approximated using the Origin2015 pro-
gram.
850
1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5
HQ concentration, mM
Fig. 3. Panel (a): extinction spectra of GNRs synthesized
at CHQ of (1) 1.3, (2) 2.6, (3) 4.0, and (4) 5.1 mМ (concen-
trations of other reagents are given in Table 1) and
panel (b): dependence of the position of longitudinal
LSPR on HQ concentration obtained by the processing of
the spectra.
position of the longitudinal LSPR of nanorods and,
hence, their aspect ratio depend nonmonotonically on
AgNO3 concentration in the system (see also Table 1).
As C AgNO3 is increased from 0.07 to 0.18 mМ, the lon-
gitudinal LSPR band shifts toward longer wave-
lengths; i.e., the aspect ratio of the GNRs grows. A
Table 2. Dependence of the apparent rate constant of GNR
growth on HQ concentration in a system
CHQ, mМ k
1.3 1.7
2.6 3.1
4.0 6.8
5.1 10.8

COLLOID JOURNAL Vol. 80 No. 5 2018

546 SALAVATOV et al.

Optical density CAu0, mM

1.4 9 0.40
1.2 8 0.35
7 0.30
1.0
6 0.25
0.8
0.20
0.6 4 3
5
0.15 2
0.4 4 1
3 0.10
0.2
0.05
12
0
400 600 800 1000 0
Wavelength, nm 0 2 4 6 20 22 24
Time, h
Fig. 4. Evolution of plasmon characteristics of GNRs syn-
thesized by protocol no. 6 in Table 1 at synthesis times of Fig. 5. Time dependences of Au(0) concentration at HQ
(1) 1, (2) 2, (3) 2.5, (4) 3, (5) 3.5, (6) 4, (7) 4.5, (8) 5, and concentrations of (1) 1.3, (2) 2.6, (3) 4, and (4) 5.1 mМ.
(9) 23 h. Points and solid lines correspond to experimental data and
their approximation by Eq. (1), respectively.

further increase in C AgNO3 (to 0.2 mМ and above)

results in a shift of the plasmon band toward shorter may change. Some changes in the apparent rate con-
wavelengths. stant of GNR growth with variations in the content of
One of the reasons for this effect may be a change silver nitrate in the reaction system confirm the valid-
in the character of the deposition of silver atoms on the ity of the latter assumption.
GNR surface with a rise in C AgNO3 . This possibility is Subsequent experiments have shown that the con-
evident from the data of [43]: at a relatively low AgNO3 version of Au(III) ions into Au(0) depends nonmono-
concentration, the blockage of faces (110) of growing tonically on AgNO3 concentration (Fig. 8): in a
GNRs occurs via the mechanism of underpotential
deposition of Ag (under these conditions, its amount C AgNO3 range of 0.07–0.17 mМ, conversion decreases
on the aforementioned faces must not be higher than from 98 to 78%. Then, it increases to some extent and
one atomic layer). An increase in C AgNO3 leads to the remains almost unchanged as C AgNO3 increases from
codeposition of Ag and Au atoms [43]. As a result, an 0.2 to 0.27 mM. The clarifying of the reasons for such
Ag/Au alloy is formed on the GNR surface, and it may
be several atomic layers thick. In our case, the content
of Ag in such an alloy may be sufficiently high, Optical density
because, at C AgNO3 ≥ 0.2 mМ, molar ratio Ag/Au ≥ 0.5. 1.4 2
3
It cannot be ruled out that, as a result, a hypsochromic
shift of the longitudinal LSPR will be observed by 1.2
analogy with the case of coating GNRs with silver [71]. 1.0
1 4
At C AgNO3 ≥ 0.2 mМ, the yield of GNRs (i.e., their 0.8
fraction relative to the total amount of the formed 5
nanoparticles) decreases significantly. This is con- 0.6
firmed by the significant decrease of the intensity of 0.4
the longitudinal LSPR as compared with the trans-
verse one and by the data of the HRTEM analysis 0.2
(Fig. 7). This may be due to several reasons. First one
is an increase in the fraction of insoluble silver bro- 0
mide, the particles of which may, probably, act as 400 600 800 1000
additional nucleation sites. Moreover, it is known that Wavelength, nm
sodium borohydride is capable of reducing both silver
and gold ions [72]. Hence, as C AgNO3 increases, not Fig. 6. Extinction spectra of GNRs prepared at AgNO3
concentrations in the system of (1) 0.07, (2) 0.13, (3) 0.17,
only the composition of seed particles, but also their (4) 0.2, and (5) 0.27 mМ (concentrations of other reagents
ability to catalyze the anisotropic growth of GNRs, are given in Table 1).

COLLOID JOURNAL Vol. 80 No. 5 2018

 SOME ASPECTS OF SEEDLESS SYNTHESIS
(а) 100 nm
(b) 100 nm
Fig. 7. HRTEM images of GNRs prepared at AgNO3 con-
centrations in the system of (а) 0.13 and (b) 0.2 mМ.
behavior of the reaction system is a goal of our further
studies.
The set of the obtained spectral data and the anal-
ysis of the HRTEM images have been used to plot the
dependence of the position of the longitudinal LSPR
on the aspect ratio of GNRs (Fig. 9). This dependence
is linear according to the Mie–Gans theory and is
described by the following equation:
y = 508 + 85x,
where x is the aspect ratio of GNRs and y is the posi-
tion of their longitudinal LSPR.
The coefficients of this equation are, as a whole, in
good agreement with the literature data (see, e.g., [47,
53, 63, 73]). However, it should be emphasized that
COLLOID JOURNAL Vol. 80 No. 5 2018
547
Conversion Au(III) into Au(0), wt %
100
95
90
85
80
75
0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30
CAgNO3, mM
Fig. 8. Conversion of Au(III) into Au(0) as depending on
AgNO3 concentration in the reaction mixture.
the scatter of these values reported in different publi-
cations is rather wide. This is due to both some differ-
ence in the shapes of the ends of GNRs prepared by
different methods [53] and the phase retardation effect
which is typical of rather large particles [73].
In conclusion, let us discuss two more facts of prin-
cipal importance from the point of view of the practi-
cal application of GNRs. First, the seedless method of
their synthesis has proved to be much less sensitive to
the purity of the used CTAB compared to the classical
seeded method. This statement is exemplified by
Fig. 10, in which the extinction spectra of the sols pre-
pared using CTAB of two types. Second, the results of
the preliminary experiments are shown that the scal-
ing of the seedless synthesis of GNRs can be per-
formed rather easily. For example, a fivefold increase
in the reaction system volume (i.е., up to 250 mL)
does not lead to any noticeable changes in the spectra
of sols.
CONCLUSIONS
The experiments have shown that the seedless syn-
thesis of GNRs has indeed a number of advantages
over the classical seeded method. In particular, they
are the simplicity of realization, the significantly
shorter reaction time, and the high conversion of
(2) Au(III) ions into Au(0). Moreover, this method
enables one to implement the tuning of the longitudi-
nal LSPR of the nanorods in a wide spectral range
(from 700 to at least 1050 nm) only by varying the ratio
of the reagents without adding any substances regulat-
ing the structure of a micellar template or the pH of a
medium.
548 SALAVATOV et al.

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