Institut Charles Sadron News

A team from ICS and other researchers from French and European labs [1] has recently published in Nano Letters a detailed study of the path followed by gold particles initially endowed with four pointy arms. Owing to their well-defined geometry, these "nanotetrapods" are easier to study than the related "nanostars", whose morphology is more diverse. Combining state-of-the-art techniques and advanced data analysis revealed a complex kinetics that starts by fast flattening of the tips into a {110} facet of the Au crystal lattice, followed by a slower reshaping step towards a final isometric shape.

Beyond the conceptual understanding of their evolution, this study (done in the framework of ANR project METATRAP) will facilitate the use of these nano-objects in nonlinear optics applications [2], made possible by their peculiar shape which lacks an inversion center.

[1] LMPQ (Université Paris Cité/CNRS), LPS (CNRS/Université de Paris-Saclay) and the European synchrotron ESRF (Grenoble).

[2] Jieli Lyu et al., Shape-Controlled Second-Harmonic Scattering from Gold Nanotetrapods, J. Phys. Chem. C 126, 9831-9835 (2022).

Reference: Jieli Lyu et al., Two-step reshaping of acicular gold nanoparticles, Nano Letters 25, 1544-1549 (2025).

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Contact: Doru Constantin