Facile synthesis of core-shell and Janus particles via 2-D dendritic growth of gold film

We report a facile method for the electroless deposition (ELD) of gold film via two-dimensional (2-D) dendritic growth. Our scheme employs protonated amine groups, which electrostatically attract both the negatively charged reducing agent and gold-precursor. This electrostatic interaction increases the local concentrations of gold-precursor and reducing agent near the silica surface to levels high enough for gold films with a 2-D fractal morphology to form directly on the surfaces of the amine-functionalized silica nanospheres by diffusion-limited aggregation. Our one-pot reaction avoids the need for seed attachment, which is typically employed for the growth of metallic shells on nanospheres. Therefore, the proposed method significantly reduces the number of processing steps required for the production of core-shell nanospheres. The gold morphologies were systematically investigated in terms of various synthesis variables, including solution pH, reducing agent concentration, and gold precursor injection speed. In addition, we synthesized gold-capped silica nanospheres via ELD of gold on a patterned array of silica nanospheres embedded in polystyrene (PS) film followed by dissolution of the PS matrix, thus demonstrating the potential utility of the proposed method in emerging fields of materials science such as patterning of noble metals and studies of nanometer-scale optics. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.