Oriented attachment-based assembly of dendritic silver nanostructures at room temperature

How particles aggregate into an interesting dendritic structure has been the object of research for many years because of its importance in understanding physical processes involved and in designing novel materials. In this work, we for the first time describe an oriented attachment-based assembly mechanism for formation of different types of dendritic silver nanostructures at room temperature. It is found that the concentration of both AgNO3 and p-aminoazobenzene (PA) molecules has a significant effect on the formation and growth of these novel nanostructures. Characterization by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) clearly shows that the dendritic silver nanostructures can be obtained through the preferential oriented growth along a crystallographically special direction. Interestingly, we observe that the oriented attachment at room temperature can also take place between relatively large single-crystalline silver particles with a diameter range from 20 to 60 nm, which may provide a new possibility for the design of novel metal nanostructures by using large metal nanoparticles as building blocks at room temperature. Moreover, a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique is used to investigate the role of PA molecules during the growth of the dendritic silver nanostructures.