Synthesis and tuning of gold nanorods with surface plasmon resonance

Gold nanostructures in general and gold nanorods in particular due to their plasmon resonance has been employed for many applications, such as biosensors. For the biosensors uses, gold nanorods remain popular and reproducibility of them is the most important and critical. In the present work we used six different CTAB (Hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide) products and one BDAC (Benzyldimethylhexadecylammonium chloride) with varying silver nitrate concentration in the seed-mediated growth of gold nanostructures. We synthesized gold nanorods with varying aspect ratio up to 5.5 with a longitudinal surface plasmon resonance peak from 670 to 950 nm. We obtained excellent rod-shape gold nanostructures witch were reliable and reproducible with our method based on common seed-mediated growth. The synthesized nanostructures were characterized by UV–visible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Here, we report our method in more detail as a user-friendly guide for the production of gold nanorods and tuning of their aspect ratios.