Truncated Triangular Silver Nanoparticles using low concentration of CTAB

Abstract Triangular silver nanoparticles have special properties which increase their importance in chemistry, biology, physical and medical applications. This work concerns with fabrication of truncated nanotriangles, using a simple chemical method. The seed mediated growth method that is usually used to synthesize nanorods, is modified to create nanotriangles. By using this modified method, we successfully obtained silver truncated nanotriangles by adding low concentration of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) into seed solution. UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis) was used to characterize the surface plasmon resonance of the formed nanoparticles. Also, the geometrical properties of nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The average edge length of truncated nanotriangle is affected by varying the amount of seed added to the growth solution; it varies from 56 nm up to 75 nm according to the amount of seed used. The degree of truncation (T) for the produced nanotriangle edges has been estimated. Furthermore, the effect of CTAB concentration as well as the speed in which NaBH4 is added to the seed solution on the formed nanoparticles was investigated.