Facile Route to Morphologically Tailored Silver Patches on Colloidal Particles

Here we demonstrate, for the first time, the heterogeneous nucleation and growth of silver patches on submicrometer silica spheres. While patches can be grown directly onto native silica particles, it is shown that a higher patch yield can be obtained by first treating the silica with a mixture of an alkanolamine and silver nitrate. Variation of the pretreatment and subsequent coating reactions allowed the patch yield, number, size, thickness, and shape to be adjusted. The patchy particles were shown to possess plasmon modes extending from the visible into the near-IR region, making these structures highly interesting for both their asymmetric morphological and functional properties.