Flow Synthesis of Plasmonic Gold Nanoshells via a Microreactor

Gold nanoshells with tunable surface plasmon resonances are a promising material for optical and biomedical applications. They are produced through seed-mediated growth, in which gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are seeded on the core particle surface followed by growth of the gold seeds into a shell. However, synthetic gold nanoshell production is typically a multistep, time-consuming batch-type process, and a simple and scalable process remains a challenge. In the present study, a continuous flow process for the seed-mediated growth of silica-gold nanoshells is established by exploiting the excellent mixing performance of a microreactor. In the AuNP-seeding step, the reduction of gold ions in the presence of core particles in the microreactor enables the one-step flow synthesis of gold-decorated silica particles through heterogeneous nucleation. Flow shell growth is also realized using the microreactor by selecting an appropriate reducing agent. Because self-nucleation in the bulk solution phase is suppressed in the microreactor system, no washing is needed after each step, thus enabling the connection of the microreactors for the seeding and shell growth steps into a sequential flow process to synthesize gold nanoshells. The established system is simple and robust, thus making it a promising technology for producing gold nanoshells in an industrial setting.