One-pot Seedless Synthesis of Uniform Gold Nanoshells and Their Photothermal Conversion Property

Abstract

Gold nanoshells have strongly tunable localized surface plasmon resonance and therefore attract considerable interest for numerous applications. Here, we present a facile one-pot seedless approach to rapidly and controllably prepare gold nanoshells. According to this approach, the continuous and uniform gold nanoshells were obtained directly by adding NaBH4, PVP, NaOH and ascorbic acid (AA) into the mixture solution of HAuCl4 and polyelectrolyte modified polystyrene (PS) colloidal spheres, sequentially. The obtained gold nanoshells showed structure-dependent localized surface plasmon resonance and their absorption wavelengths red-shifted as the gold nanoshells grew from incomplete to continuous gold layers. In terms of the photothermal conversion property, gold nanoshells could effectively convert 808 nm laser to heat and the temperature increase depended highly on the structure of gold nanoshells.