“9.61x6.69” b2815 Tissue Engineering and Nanotheranostics
Plasmonic Nanoparticles Application in Biosensor and Bioimaging 165
seeds to anisotropically grow into nanorods and nanobars, respec
tively.^91 The single twinned seeds produce right bipyramids or nano
beams with a truncated and ultimately sharp morphology.^77 Besides,
multiply twinned seeds grow into rods or nanowires with a pentago
nal crosssection directly. In general, cubes, bipyramids, and pentago
nal wires are usually prepared by polyol process. In order to improve
the purity of production, a number of ways, such as oxidative etching,
have been investigated. Oxidative etching removes multiply twinned
Fig. 2. A schematic illustrating the reaction pathways that lead to AuNPs having
different shapes. First, a precursor is reduced or decomposed to form nuclei (small
clusters). Once the nuclei have grown past a certain size, they become seeds with a
singlecrystal, singly twinned, or multiply twinned structures. Twin planes are deline
ated in the drawing with blue lines. Figure modified with permission from Ref. 90.
Copyright 2011, American Chemical Society.