Deposition of silver nanobowl arrays using polystyrene nanospheres both as reagents and as the templating material

Abstract

There is considerable interest in the development of nanostructured metal surfaces for applications in chemical sensing, optics, catalysis and magnetics. For a number of years, the use of templates based on polystyrene nanospheres has been particularly successful for the construction of meso- and macroporous surfaces. We have discovered that redox groups on the surfaces of commercially available polystyrene nanospheres reduce Ag⁺ ions directly. When the nanospheres are arranged as a close packed template on a glassy carbon surface, the reduced Ag preferentially deposits in the pores of the polystyrene template. After removing the template, very well defined Ag nanobowl arrays remain on the carbon surface. This discovery may open the door to the production of highly inexpensive polystyrene-templated metal nanostructures for photonic and sensing applications.