Rapid continuous flow synthesis of high-quality silver nanocubes and nanospheres

Abstract

We report a biphasic-liquid segmented continuous flow method for the synthesis of high-quality plasmonic single crystal silver nanocubes and nanospheres. The nanocubes were synthesized with controllable edge lengths from 20 to 48 nm. Single crystal nanospheres with a mean size of 29 nm were obtained by in-line continuous-flow etching of as-produced 39 nm nanocubes with an aqueous solution of FeNO₃. In comparison to batch synthesis, the demonstrated processes represent highly scalable reactions, in terms of both production rate and endurance. The reactions were conducted in a commercially available flow-reactor system that is easily adaptable to industrial-scale production, facilitating widespread utilization of the procedure and the resulting nanoparticles.