Journal
ACS NANO
Volume 6, Issue 2, Pages 1578-1588Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/nn2045449
Keywords
gold nanorods; poly(2-vinyl pyridine); nanocomposite films; percolation network; transmission electron microscopy; Monte Carlo simulation; optical properties
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation
- Polymer [DMR09-07493]
- MRSEC [DMR11-20901]
- NSF/IGERT [DGE-0221664]
- NSF/NSEC [DMR08-32802]
- Division Of Materials Research
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien [1120901] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In this paper, polymer nanocomposite films containing gold nanorods (AuNRs) and poly(2-vinyl pyridine) (P2VP) have been investigated for their structure-optical property relationship. Using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), the assembly of AuNRs (7.9 nm x 28.4 nm) grafted with a P2VP brush in P2VP films is examined as a function of the AuNR volume fraction (sic)(AuNRs) and film thidmess h. For h similar to 40 nm, AuNRs are confined to align parallel to the film and uniformly dispersed at low (sic)(AuNRs). Upon increasing (sic)(AuNRs), nanorods form discrete aggregates containing mainly side-by-side mays due to depletion-attraction forces For (sic)(AuNRs) = 2.7%, AuNRs assemble into a 2D network where the discrete aggregates are connected by end-to-end linked nanorods. As (sic)(AuNRs), further increases, the polymer-rich regions of the network fill in with nanorods and rod overlap is observed. Monte Carlo simulations capture the experimentally observed morphologies. The effect of film tidiness is investigated at (sic)(AuNRs) = 2.7%, where thicket films (40 and 70 nm) show a dense array of percolated nanorods and thinner films (20 nm) exhibit mainly isolated nanorods. Using Rutherford had-scattering spectrometry (RBS), the AuNRs are observed to segregate near the substrate during spin-sting. Optically, the longitudinal surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) peaks are correlated with the local orientation of the AuNRs, where side-by-side and end-to-end alignments induce blue and red shifts, respectively. The LSPR undergoes a red shift up to 51 nm as (sic)(AuNRs) increases from 1.6 to 2.7%. These studies indicate that the optical properties of polymer nanocomposite films containing gold nanorods can be fine-tuned by changing (sic)(AuNRs) and h. These results are broadly applicable and provide guidelines for dispersing other fuactional nanoparticles, such as quantum dots and carbon nanotubes.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available