A Facile Synthesis of Two-Dimensional Dendritic Gold Nanostructures at the Air/Water Interface

Two-dimensional dendritic gold nanostructures are synthesized at the air/water interface with the assistance of a special additive.[camphorC(2)mim]cl, which can form a precipitate with AuCl4-. Interestingly, the precipitate is essential to the formation of dendritic nanostructures. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) characterization reveals that the ratio of [camphorC(2)mim]Cl to HAuCl4, rather than the concentration is crucial to the morphology of the obtained dendritic nanostructures. A reasonable mechanism based on diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) theory is proposed according to the high resolution TEM (HRTEM) characterization. The obtained gold dendrites are shown to yield a large surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) enhancement for rhodamine 6G.