Size- and Shape-Controlled Synthesis and Properties of Magnetic-Plasmonic Core-Shell Nanoparticles

Magnetic-plasmonic core-shell nanomaterials offer a wide range of applications across science, engineering, and biomedical disciplines. However, the ability to synthesize and understand magnetic-plasmonic core-shell nanoparticles with tunable sizes and shapes remains very limited. This work reports experimental and computational studies on the synthesis and properties of iron oxide-gold core-shell nanoparticles of three different shapes (sphere, popcorn, and star) with controllable sizes (70 to 250 nm). The nanoparticles were synthesized via a seed-mediated growth method in which newly formed gold atoms were added onto gold-seeded iron oxide octahedrons to form a gold shell. The evolution of the shell into different shapes was found to occur after the coalescence of gold seeds, which was achieved by controlling the amount of additive (silver nitrate) and reducing agent (ascorbic acid) in the growth solution. First-principles calculation, together with experimental results, elucidated the intimate roles of thermodynamic and kinetic parameters in the shape-controlled synthesis. Both discrete dipole approximation calculation and experimental results showed that the nanopopcorns and nanostars exhibited red-shifted plasmon resonance compared with the nanospheres, with the nanostars giving multispectral feature. This research has made a great step further in manipulating and understanding magnetic-plasmonic hybrid nanostructures and will make an important impact in many different fields.